


Count of Three

by KaSaPe



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Bickering, Canon-Typical Violence, Fake Science, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 03:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12855663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaSaPe/pseuds/KaSaPe
Summary: Lance and Keith wake up in a cell with no recollection of who they are or how they got here. While it certainly wasn’t ideal, it was something they could deal with - that is, until they found out that their capturers were aliens (actual, real life aliens) that accused Keith of being something called a “Galra” and Lance of being his “Excazcán”. When the aliens pull out torture devices and guns to make them talk, they decide that it is about time to go.And that’s how they end up making their way across an unfamiliar planet, get chased by the alien police, steal a camel (amongst some other stuff) and accidentally become the leaders of a shady underground gang. At the end of the day it is, according to Lance, “the best date ever”.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So uh. Remember when I said that I'd participate in a big bang? Yeah...... this was the fic I was writing for it but then I dropped out because I grew to hate it so much. I had already written 37k words though and it seemed like a waste to just ignore it all... so here I am :'D
> 
> I also hope you guys like cliffhangers because that's what you'll get for like 80% of the story ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

He woke with a start and a splitting headache. His head felt heavy… something was _wrong_.

Squinting against the low light, he took in his surroundings. He was in some kind of cell, almost. The floor and the walls were made of a dark metal, the only exception being the wall to his left. That one was made of some kind of green glowing... force field-thingy with orange stripes that made him wary about touching it. He would probably get deep fried or something.

Wait. That wasn’t the main problem here. Why the fuck was he in a cell?!

“Hello?” he called out. No one answered him. “Hello? Guys! Anyone? Is there anyone here? Where am I?!”

All of a sudden, there was a loud groan behind him. Letting out a loud squeak, he scrambled away from the noise and towards the forcefield before turning around.

A guy. There was an attractive guy around his age, wearing… something. Something indeed. It was some kind of truly strange diving suit, complete with helmet and everything. The helmed lay discarded next to him, allowing the black mop of hair to fall freely around his face.

“Holy mother of- who are you?! And what are you wearing?!” he demanded to know, still keeping a safe distance from the boy. He was in a cell after all, who knew what kind of criminal the guy was. He was pretty sure that a misunderstanding had gotten _himself_ in here, he wasn’t the kind of guy to get into trouble with the law, but there was no guarantee that the _other_ man was the same.

Grumbling a little under his breath, the man sat up and pressed a hand to his head. “Could you please stop shouting? I think my head is trying to kill me.”

“Well, you’re not alone with that.” He grimaced as he put his own hand to his head.

And almost got a heart attack. Because whatever he was touching, it most definitely wasn’t his head.

“Fucking shit what is- what is this, oh my god, get it _off_ me-” He put both of his hands against the bowl on his head, quickly pulling it off. Only that it wasn’t a bowl: it was a helmet similar to the one lying next to the other guy. With a sinking feeling in his gut he looked down at himself.

Yeah. Yeah, he also wore a matching diving suit.

“Um, dude-”

“Just. Please stop talking,” the guy responded in a pained tone. He had his eyes closed again and lowered himself back onto the ground. Did he want to go to sleep? If they hadn’t been in this situation, he might have joined him, actually; the idea certainly was tempting with the killer-headache he was sporting.

But alas, they were in this situation, and if the guy really wanted to go back to sleep then he was shit out of luck. He had a few urgent questions that he needed answers to. Right now.

“No can do, buddy. I need to know who my cellmate is,” he said grimly.

For a moment the guy didn’t react at all, then he shot up as if someone had thrown freezing water onto him. “We are in a cell?!” he asked with wide eyes.

“Yep. And we are wearing matching outfits, apparently. Were we going to a convention or something? Are we divers? Astronauts? I don’t recognize what characters we are supposed to be.” The guy didn’t react at all, he just stared at nothingness, seemingly a little dazed. Growing impatient, he snapped his fingers. “Hello? Dude? We are in jail. Mind telling me how we got here? Mamá is going to kill me!”

Finally the other guy’s eyes settled onto him. “Mam- no, nevermind that. How did we end up in jail?!”

“I don’t know, that’s what I was just asking you!”

“Well, I don’t know either!”

“Why don’t you know?!”

“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know, okay! Who are you even?!”

“I don’t know!” he yelled back. He had only screamed that because he had needed to scream _something_ \- but a wave of dread washed over him when he realized that he really didn’t know. “Fuck,” he whispered, eyes wide. “I don’t know who I am.”

There was a beat of silence, then the guy cleared his throat. “Neither… neither do I.”

Shoving his terror aside, he lifted his head to get a good look at his cellmate. He was pretty sure that he had never seen him before, not in real life at least. There was a vague feeling he got… as if he had already met someone similar to him in a dream or something. A face that he had passed on the street once. Nothing with a lasting impression.

It was infuriating.

“Okay, so… we are in this weird high-tech cell, yeah? And we don’t know how we got here, where we are or who we are?” he asked, trying for calm but ending up somewhere at badly disguised panic. At least the guy didn’t seem to be judging him for it.

“Yeah…”

“Alright. Cool. I really need to get out of here though, preferably without dragging my family into this, so… any ideas?”

The guy sent him a strange look. “Are you trying to ask me if I know how to break out of jail?”

“Ye- I mean, no! Are you insane?! I’m pretty sure that you only end up behind ultra modern force fields when you committed some serious offense against the law. Or when you are at the really wrong place at the really wrong time. Breaking out is not a solution, then the police will most definitely be after us!” he hissed back. The guy didn’t seem impressed though.

“How else are we gonna get out?”

“I don’t know! That’s what I was asking!” he said. Adding a “keep up for once, will you?” under his breath, he finally moved away from the force field. The constant buzzing behind him was making him nervous, he really didn’t want to accidentally fall against it. Leaving his helmet on the ground, he crawled over to the side before twisting around and leaning against a wall. A small _‘oof’_ sound left his lips when the white part of his suit dug into his back.

Then he blankly stared at the air in front of him.

He was in jail. How was this reality? His mamá really would kill him. How come he didn’t remember his own name but he did remember her? Kind of, at least; he couldn’t recall what she looked like. Or where she was. Or where _he_ was. And he didn’t even- he knew nothing, absolutely nothing, he didn’t know the other guy with him, didn’t know how they got here-

“Hey,” he called, making the other guy let out a hum. “If you had to give me a name, which name would it be?”

“Lance,” was the immediate answer.

All of a sudden, both of their heads snapped up. That name had felt like a punch to the gut, an overwhelming feeling of rightness crashing into him with enough force to send his thoughts careening. Lance lifted a hand to his chest, placing it over his racing heart. “You-”

“I have no idea where that came from,” the other guy said. But Lance didn’t even pay attention to him anymore, he was much more focused on feeling. Lance. That was his name. Lance was his name. He was Lance. Lance.

It was stupid how much the sound much his own name made him want to cry.

He had a _name_.

“Yeah, that’s…” His voice cracked a little so cleared his throat and tried again. “That feels right. I’m Lance.” Breathing in a few times, he finally managed to send the guy a smile. “I guess that means we do know each other after all, huh?”

The guy didn’t smile back. “Who am I?”

“Easy. You’re-”

But Lance came up blank. The only thing there was was that stupid itch that told him that yeah, he had known who the guy was. At some point. Just not now. Not anymore.

“Hang on. I know your name. I do. I really do. It’s somewhere in here,” Lance said, tapping against his head. Pursing his lips, he tried to remember.

It was there, he knew that it was there. He could feel it. It was on the tip of his tongue, there was a spark, a letter, a name, something- it was so close. Close enough that he could almost taste it.

Almost. But not quite.

Letting out a frustrated noise, Lance gave the guy an apologetic look. “It’s there. I swear it’s there. I’ll remember it in just a moment.”

“Sure you will,” the guy answered, his shoulders visibly hunching as he turned around. Lance felt bad for him.

“I’ll remember! I’m not stupid, I can do it! Promise!” He wasn’t quite sure whether they were friends but the fact that they were wearing similar suits seemed to point in that direction. And Lance loved his friends - he would never leave one of them feeling bad. Especially not if he knew that he could help, extra-especially not since he knew the relief came from remembering your own name after you had forgotten it.

“Sure. Just like you will remember how we got here. And I guess you’ll also come up with a plan to get us out?” the guy bit out. Lance drew his eyebrows together.

“Wow there. I was just trying to be helpful.”

“Try again when you can actually remember your own name.”

Resisting the urge to snap something back, Lance turned his head away. He couldn’t exactly fault the guy for being angry at him, not if he was- well, not if he was right. He had remembered Lance’s name but Lance hadn’t remembered his. In a way he had just let his friend down.

Shit. That was so uncool.

“I’ll go to sleep, wake me up if something happens,” the guy said, curling up on the ground. Lance just made an affirmative noise, it wasn’t as if he could do much else. He could inspect the force field but something told him that it probably wasn’t a great idea to get too close to it.

So instead of poking against the green and orange glowing stuff, Lance put his hands behind his head and tried to _remember_. Remember how he got here. A jail. A pretty fucking high-tech jail, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t even seen that kind of force field in movies. This had to be the most developed jail in the entire world.

Just what had he done to end up here?

Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Maybe he had really only been out with his friend. A convention wasn’t even too bad of a guess. Why else would they be dressed up as some kind of weird power rangers? The suit wasn’t even that comfortable! Or, well, the suit was okay, the problem was the white plate over his chest that dug uncomfortably into his back where he leaned against the wall. He should get the guy to help him take it off later.

The guy. His friend. What was his name?

Lance didn’t fucking remember. He got nothing.

Sighing once, Lance let himself fall forward and rolled over, sprawling out on the floor. He had absolutely no memories. How come he remembered what a power ranger was but not who the guy was? Or what had happened to them? Where they were and why they were here? How he had lost his memories? Anything?!

He didn’t feel injured. There was that, at least. He couldn’t have lost his memories through temporary amnesia from a trauma. Not a… physical trauma at least. Could you go through enough psychological torture to forget everything about yourself? Oh god, what if he was a secret agent, caught by the enemy government and was repressing his own memories as a kind of self-defense mechanism?!

...why would a secret agent be dressed like this though?

Lance didn’t know. He didn’t know, he couldn’t make sense of it. It was driving him insane. How could his friend just sleep through all of this?!

Friend, he mused as he rolled over onto his stomach, mushing his cheek against the ground. The metal was weirdly warm, definitely not at the cool temperature that he had imagined it to be. That guy was his friend. Probably. Why couldn’t he remember him?

The position quickly grew uncomfortable with the chestplate digging into his ribs, so he rolled back onto his back, starfishing out and staring at the guy’s head. Lance couldn’t see his face from here but he knew that he was pretty. Stupidly pretty. He would have probably flirted with him if they weren’t in _jail_ together.

Wait.

They wore matching costumes and were in jail. Together. What if that guy was his boyfriend or something?!

He couldn’t believe that he forgot the name of his _boyfriend_!

Oh god, what was his name? It couldn’t be that hard, right? By all means, the guy had remembered Lance’s name! He should be able to remember his name, too!

But he just couldn’t.

Lance was only seconds away from screaming in frustration when there were suddenly footsteps. Scrambling to wake the guy on time, Lance tugged at his foot and almost got kicked in the face in the process.

“What?” the guy hissed.

“Someone’s coming! Get up!” Lance hissed back. The guy’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then he was sitting up, shuffling closer to Lance. Lance would have been impressed by his ability to wake up within 0.2 seconds if the force field hadn’t lowered itself at right that instant, luring his attention elsewhere.

And keeping it there.

Because in front of them - there were two _aliens_. Green, kind of furry looking aliens with four arms and legs that bent in the wrong direction. Like birds, kind of. Scary birds.

Lance squeaked and pressed up against the guy beside him who had gone completely rigid. “Are those- oh my god, please tell me that this is just a dream,” Lance whispered. They had been abducted by _aliens_. He should have known, there was no way this force field was a human invention.

His (boy-)friend leaned a little more towards him, presumably to keep the aliens from listening in on his words. He smelled nice. “If it is your dream you better wake up now.”

“But I don’t know how!” Lance stage-whispered back. He was way too terrified to be bothered by the fact that the aliens could most definitely hear them.

“We have to get out of here. You take the right one, I’ll take the left one-”

“Wait, we can’t just-”

“It is the red one,” the left alien said. They raised some kind of advanced gun with two of their four arms and pointed it at Lance’s friend. If possible, the guy grew even more tense at that. Lance wasn’t quite sure whether his own muscles were still working well enough to mimic him.

“Come with us, Galra,” the right alien said.

Galra. Galra?

Lance turned his head to look at his friend but he didn’t seem to recognize the name. He just leaned even closer, his eyes never leaving the aliens before him, and whispered “on the count of three” into Lance’s ear. His voice sent shudders down Lance’s back and he had the momentary - inappropriate - thought that he certainly wouldn’t mind this guy being his boyfriend.

But then his words registered.

“No!” he exclaimed. And just to be sure that he had gotten his point across, he draped an arm over the guy’s legs, keeping him trapped on the floor. “Are you insane? That alien has a _gun_!”

“Two guns,” the alien corrected and pulled a second one from somewhere behind their back. Lance’s eyes grew even bigger and he pointed at them with his head.

“ _Two guns_ ,” he repeated, willing his friend to just drop his plan. The stubborn gaze stayed though.

“And I won’t hesitate to use them.”

“ _And they won’t hesitate to use them_!”

“And my friend has two more.”

“ _And their friend has_ -”

“Okay, yes, I got it,” Lance’s friend cut him off in an irritated voice. His eyes were still trained on the aliens though. “What do you want from me?”

“Come with us,” the right alien repeated. Lance swallowed and loosened his hold over his friend’s legs, allowing him to get out of there if he really wanted to.

He didn’t do anything.

Well, good. At least they were on the same page then. Lance didn’t exactly want them to split up either.

“You have got three ticks,” the left alien said, raising both of their guns in a threatening manner. Lance squeaked and shuffled himself in front of his friend, hands raised in an universal peace gesture. He hoped that the aliens got the message.

“You really don’t need those guns. How about we just talk for now? You, me, your friend over there and my friend over here? We could- we could go for a nice tea, have some cookies, make some chit-chat, all in a peaceful atmosphere, preferably not in a cell - and, you know, without those guns - I’m pretty sure that this is all just a big misunderstanding.”

“Three,” the alien said, unimpressed. For a moment Lance couldn’t talk, he was overwhelmed with panic - and then he just started babbling whatever.

“Okay, okay, fine, no cookies. What about some nice chicharróns? I actually know a place where we could get them - if we are still on Earth, that is - do you think you could get us back to Earth? I think there has been a major misunderstanding here. My family is going to miss me - oh fuck, how old am I even? I really need to find out what year it is-”

“Two.”

“Please!” Lance said desperately, extending his hands towards them in an attempt to calm them down. “We mean you no harm! My friend over here probably doesn’t even remember what he has done to offend you-”

“One. I would move now if I were you,” the alien answered cooly. Their grip on the guns didn’t falter, one of their four fingers now hovering over each of the triggers. Lance swore but didn’t move from his place - he wouldn’t let that alien hurt his friend. No. He refused to let that happen.

It seemed that his friend had similar intentions though, roughly shoving him aside and dropping himself onto the ground in the process. Lucky. The gun went off and the laser projectile bounced harmlessly off the wall where his friend had just been. It didn’t leave a scratch on the dark metal, something that told Lance that either the laser guns were crap or this metal jail was even tougher than he had previously thought. He wasn’t about to test it.

As soon as the gun had sounded, his friend had rolled himself across the floor, tackling the left alien that hadn’t quite yet recovered from the recoil of the gun. Lance let out a shout, he wasn’t ready, what was that guy doing, he wasn’t anywhere close the right alien, the right alien had a gun too- and then it was too late.

Lance saw it all happen in slow motion. He was rooted to the spot and not able to help. One moment it seemed as if his friend could get a grip on one of the guns, the next moment the alien threw their second gun out of his reach, using their newly freed hands to grab his throat. His friend was getting choked as the other alien came up behind him, pointing one gun at his back and their second one at Lance.

It was over before it had even begun, really.

But hey, it wasn’t as if that had been a fair fight! It had been four guns against zero! They hadn’t had _anything_ to defend themselves with! Not that the aliens seemed to care much about fairness, if their unwillingness to listen to them was anything to go by.

“Come with us, Galra, or your Excazcán will die,” the right alien said in a monotone voice. Lance had absolutely no idea what that word meant, but he was pretty sure that they were talking about him.

Pressing his lips together, he watched as his friend slowly let go of the first alien, his arms dropping to his sides. He turned his head to look at Lance - there was some fear in his eyes, but above anything else there was a fierce protectiveness that made Lance’s heart beat a little faster. Despite not really remembering each other, Lance could understand the guy’s silent reassurances as if they had grown up alongside each other.

 _It will be alright_ , he seemed to say. _We will get out of here. I won’t leave you here. It will all turn out fine._

And then the aliens moved, pushing his friend away, one gun still positioned against his back. “Wait!” Lance shouted, scrambling to his feet as the force field rose back up. He went as close as he dared, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Where are you taking him?!”

No one answered.

“I said, where are you taking him?! I have a right to know! Tell me!”

They ignored Lance. What if he didn’t come back?

Ice cold fear took over his heart.

“ _Keith!_ I’ll find you, just hold on, I’ll get out of here, wait for me!”

And then they were gone. Lance didn’t even get to see Keith’s reaction to hearing his name.

Falling to his knees, Lance pressed his hands to the eerily warm metal. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This situation was sick. They had been abducted by aliens that didn’t hesitate to shoot at them and erase their memories - and now they had separated him from his only friend.

He would find a way out of here. He had to.  

“Wait for me, Keith,” he whispered into the empty cell.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things that might be of interest:
> 
> 1\. the POV changes between Lance and Keith every chapter  
> 2\. I will update every 2-3 days (more likely 3)  
> 3\. fake science is f a k e. fake enough to rival canon vld's fake science, that's for sure  
> 4\. this takes place before the end of s2 but after the BoM episode

_Keith_.

The name echoed in his ears, making him stagger for a moment. Then the gun was back between his shoulder blades, pressing against him, urging him onwards. Keith didn’t really care too much about that; he remembered. He remembered his name. _He had his name back_.

Somehow, it was easier to breathe like this.

“Turn right at the next corner,” said the alien behind him. Keith shook his head and tried to clear his thoughts. His name wasn’t important right now, he had to focus on how to get Lance and himself out of here.

While he allowed the aliens to push him into this or that direction, he took in his surroundings. There were surprisingly few guards, just one lone alien with two guns every other corridor. Apart from the aliens, there were small, cube-like robots rolling around the floors that didn’t seem to serve any purpose. More surveillance? Maybe they had hidden guns, too?

Either way, the lack of proper guards meant that the aliens were either super confident in their confinement cells or that they had another security system in place. The robots might have been a part of that.

Keith’s eyes darted around, trying to take in as much as possible without drawing attention to it. He pretended to crack his neck as he tilted his head to get a look at the small holes on top of the walls instead. Were those air vents? Or cameras? He couldn’t tell. Cameras would make sense though, he supposed - if they had good surveillance they would need less guards.

Damn. That would make everything a lot harder than he had hoped. He hadn’t seen anything resembling a security office either… what kind of jail was this?

Before he could come up with a good plan, the alien with the red stripes on their forehead halted in front of a metal door. Keith got a sinking feeling in his stomach, this didn’t look good. This didn’t look good at all. Something told him that he really didn’t want to go through that door.

It wasn’t as if he had a choice though. The alien with the stripes made their way into the room, the other one pushing their gun into his back. Giving in to the threat, Keith stepped forward.

The room was mostly empty. There was a chair in the middle of it with some kind of attached helmet and a table with something that might have been a taser. Keith tried not to think too much about it. If his assumptions were correct, he thought bitterly, then he would find out soon enough anyway.

“Sit down,” the alien with the gun said, nudging him towards the chair. For one desperate second Keith considered ripping the helmet thing off, throwing it at the alien and running away - but then his thoughts went back to Lance and he couldn’t do it. If he was to be tortured, fine. Not Lance though. He could hold out until he thought up a plan to get his friend out of here.

Some part of him questioned if he shouldn’t be more concerned at the prospect of torture, but he didn’t pay it any mind. That was for his future self to worry about. For now he really had to focus on figuring out the security system.

Keith sat down into the chair, allowing the first alien to fasten restraints at his wrists, elbows, knees and ankles. That made things hard: had it only been his wrists, he was sure he could have wriggled out of them somehow. But these aliens obviously knew what they were doing, it was probably far from their first time of torturing innocent people.

He was innocent, right?

Yeah, he was. He had to be. He was here with Lance, for god’s sake, and Lance didn’t seem like the kind of person to hurt a fly. The way he had thrown himself in front of Keith was proof of that, he had been ready to die for him.

He had been ready to _die_ for him. They wore matching costumes. They remembered each other’s names, even if they couldn’t remember their own. Just what were they?!

“Sit still now,” the alien with the yellow dots commanded as they lowered the helmet onto Keith’s head. He closed his eyes, expecting some kind of sudden pain - but there was no such thing. Just soft padding and a cool, plastic-like texture settling against his temples.

A little confused, he opened his eyes again. The red alien had now stepped in front of him, arms crossed, while their partner reached for the taser. Oh boy, here they came.

But they didn’t. Instead they calmly resumed their place next to the red alien, entwining their lower hands while keeping their upper arms crossed.

“Alright. Time to talk,” the red alien said, using their upper right hand to press a button on Keith’s helmet. Once again he tensed, expecting some kind of pain - but the only thing that happened was a green screen popping up.

“First question - do not attempt to lie or we will know it. Why did you pretend to be human?”

Keith couldn’t help the way his eyebrows wandered up his forehead. “I didn’t? I am human?”

Despite the lack of eyebrows and their eerily insect-like eyes, the aliens managed to frown at him. “We repeat: do not lie.”

“But I am not lying!” Keith said, stressing every syllable. “I am human. That’s all there is to it. Or do I look non-human to you?”

None of the aliens graced that with a verbal response. For a few moments they stared at him with expressionless faces, then the yellow alien reached out and connected the taser to Keith’s hand. A sharp pain travelled up his arm, burned its way through his chest and made it hard to breathe. He was pretty sure that he let out a shout but couldn’t quite remember it once the taser was taken away.

“We repeat: why did you pretend to be human?”

“I am not pretending! I am just as human as Lance is!” Keith called out, flinching a little when the alien with the yellow dots raised the taser again.

“You do not wish to keep lying to us, Galra soldier. Tell us the truth. Why were you lying about your identity? Is Voltron allied with Zarkon now? Did you think that we wouldn’t be able to see past your disguise?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Keith huffed. The pain was expected this time, but it was just as blinding as before. “ _Fuck!_ I am not lying! Stop hurting me!”

“The arc does not lie and neither does it err in its ways. Why are you with a human? How did you convince him to become your Excazcán?”

What a load of bullshit. Keith didn’t need his memories to know that the aliens were absolutely insane.

Defiantly, he raised his head and burned his eyes into theirs.

“I am human,” he spat into their faces.

 

* * *

 

It took the aliens a while until they gave up. Keith was pretty sure that his throat was so raw from all the screaming that even drinking water would hurt at this point. Talking certainly did. He had figured their methods out though - they were just asking the same things over and over again. While they did that, they used the helmet to monitor his brain activity, telling them if he had had a reaction to certain questions. They were probably waiting for him to ‘slip up’ and show that he was lying… only that he _wasn’t_ lying. He was human.

Too bad for them. Now they had wasted their time on nothing at all.

Something told Keith that he probably shouldn’t be so smug when he had just gotten tortured for who knows how long but he didn’t let that stop him. Even if he had magically regained his memories and understood why they were assuming that he was an alien he would have kept resisting them. Those assholes wouldn’t break him, no one would. Not if he had a person to protect.

He had to get Lance out of here.

Following the aliens back to the cell was a lot harder than walking to the torture room. He could have sworn that there was still electricity coursing through his muscles, making them twitch and collapse at random times. He felt weak and he couldn’t stand it.

It wasn’t completely bad though. He could use that to his advantage. The weaker he was, the less attentive the aliens would be. Keith made sure to stumble often and exaggerate the trembling of his hands just to get them to underestimate him a little more. He had just one chance at this; if he fucked this up, Lance and him might never get out of this jail alive.

Once they entered the floor to their cell, Keith tensed his body. He could see the familiar green force field at the end of it - now they just had to lower it and then-

“Keith? Keith, is that you?” Lance called out, hasty footsteps sounding as he closed in on the force field. “Are you okay?!”

“Fine!” he called back. Then he grimaced, his throat really hurt a lot. Even if drinking water would probably hurt, he really craved some right about now.

“Are you sure? You don’t sound that fine!”

“Fuck off!” Suppressing a light cough, Keith stumbled again. Entirely for show this time. The alien with the yellow dots approached the wall next to the force field, pressing one three-fingered hand onto a metal plate that gave way to open a small hole. There was a scanning process involved and maybe some kind of code too, Keith couldn’t see it well enough from where he stood. That information was useless anyway, Lance and him would never get past the scanning part on their own.

So yeah. They really only had this one chance.

“Lance!” Keith called, watching the force field disappear. Lance was right there at the border, stance relaxed but eyes calculating. His brows were furrowed as if he had spent the entire time he was gone worrying about him. Suppressing a soft smile, Keith cocked an eyebrow. However they had known each other before all this, he had a feeling that they had gotten along great.

“Yo, Keith,” Lance said casually. Keith’s eyes locked onto his and he gave a small nod into the direction of the alien at the panel.

_‘That one’s yours.’_

And then he spun around, trusting Lance that he had understood his command. The alien behind him seemed to have anticipated his move, already firing the gun - but Keith ducked under it and wrapped an arm around the alien’s neck. The guns were more like blasters than guns, too big to turn them around and aim them at oneself. Keith should be relatively safe as long as he stayed close to the alien and kept twisting them around, not giving them a chance to fire at his feet.

Or grab a taser with the arms at their midsection, he suddenly realized. Acting quick, Keith whirled around and slammed the alien’s head against the wall. They immediately went slack in his grip, sliding down the metal and crumbling together on the floor. There was a weirdly lilac substance at the wall - their blood, Keith realized. Whatever, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t killed the guy, he probably just had a severe concussion. No regrets.

Grabbing the alien’s gun, Keith turned, ready to help Lance in case he needed it. Lance seemed to be doing just fine though: the alien with the yellow dots was already lying in a heap on the floor, their gun now in Lance’s possession. Keith grinned proudly and relaxed his own fighting stance.

“Nice going, man.”

“Yeah, I’d say so too,” Lance answered, twirling the gun around in a flourish. “I like these things. They feel right, somehow. I think I’ve found my calling.”

“What? Becoming a guard in a corrupt alien prison?”

“No,” Lance answered, giving him a smirk. “I think should be a sniper. I think I’d make a pretty awesome shooter. Wanna bet?”

Before Keith could answer him, two of the cube robots suddenly appeared at the end of the hall. Narrowing his eyes, he slowly raised his gun at them. Were they part of the security system or were they just on a regularly scheduled round here?

“Aw, look, it’s Wall-E and a friend,” Lance cooed, lowering his gun to extend a hand towards them. “Come here, little guys! Do you know the way out of here?”

As if on cue, both robots opened a hatch. Cursing loudly, Keith grabbed Lance around his waist and jumped back behind the wall of their cell. Not even a moment later the sound of laser guns filled the hallways.

“Dude,” Lance wheezed next to him. “ _Dude_. That was close.”

“Too close. Maybe next time try not to befriend stuff that wants to murder us,” Keith bit out, listening to the high-pitched whirr of the robots’ wheels. They were coming closer - soon they would have reached an angle that would allow their laser guns to aim past the wall at Lance and him.

“Okay, not fair. They can’t just create cute robots that look like Wall-E and make them go all killing machines on us. That’s betrayal of the highest kind.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about but we gotta move,” Keith hissed, pressing himself closer to the wall as he searched for a way out of this. They could dive below the fire and maybe pass the robots but there was no way that they would be able to cross the hallway unharmed. Maybe if they dove under the fire and smashed them to pieces before they could recalculate their-

“Wow, wow, wow, what do you think you are doing?” Lance asked, pulling Keith back by the collar.

“Let- let go of me! We need to get rid of the robots!”

“Yeah, and that’s not gonna happen if you just charge at them like a brainless idiot. That’s just gonna get rid of _you_.”

Keith pressed his lips together and frowned hard. It wasn’t that he didn’t see Lance’s logic - but they didn’t have time to think of something better! The robots were almost around the corner and he couldn’t let them reach Lance-

“Okay, tell you what, I have another idea. While you were gone I discovered that these things here,” he patted against the white arm plates, “have a shield in them. So I’ll go out there, draw their fire to me and you shoot them. Think you can hit ‘em?”

It was weird, Keith thought. He didn’t even waste a second considering whether Lance’s plan might work. Lance had his full trust and he was sure that the same was true the other way around. He instinctively knew that between them Lance was the plan guy and he was the action guy; that they were used to working together. That they were a team.

Lance raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. “What are you smiling about?”

“Just thinking that we make a good team,” Keith responded. He could see Lance’s eyes widen momentarily but before he could answer him, Keith pushed him out towards the fire. Lance yelped and suddenly there was a blue screen shielding him, the green lasers fully focused onto him.

“Keith? I’m ready anytime now!” Lance called out, trying to cower behind the shield.

“Right on.” Keith nodded to himself and readied his finger over the trigger of his gun, then jumped out of hiding and began firing. Honestly, he probably missed most of his shots, but as long as he got rid of the target he didn’t care.

“Keith! Could you please aim at the enemy?!” Lance shrieked.

Okay, so, maybe he cared a little. “Sorry,” he called back, trying to get the gun under his control. He didn’t quite manage to do it, the robots stopped working before that, but it was close enough.

“Oh man, dude,” Lance breathed once the danger was over. “One day you’re going to get us both killed. No more guns for you.”

“So you think you’re better?” Keith challenged. Lance smirked.

“Correction: I know I’m better. I’m pretty sure that I would have been able to hit the muzzles of those lasers dead on.”

“Sure you would,” Keith said, patronizingly patting his shoulder as they ran down the corridor and out into the main floor.

“I’ll prove it to you with the next robots, you take my place and I take yours.”

And when the next robots came around, Lance did just that. He dragged Keith behind a corner, activated his shield for him and pushed him back out again. And then he took his gun and _shot_. The first two shots didn’t quite hit the target, but the next two shots hit dead center. Keith wasn’t even sure how to properly express his awe for that.

“What the hell, that was crazy!” Keith hissed, eyes full of wonder. The grin that Lance gave him in response was entirely worth it.

“I know, right? I swear, I was born to wield a gun. Or at least trained to wield one. Do you think we are secret agents? That’s been on my mind for quite some time now and I really need confirmation.”

Keith snorted, about to dismiss him when he remembered his own reaction to being faced with torture. It was as if it hadn’t been the first time that his mind had processed such a threat.

Just who were they?!

“We… might have been,” Keith agreed slowly, his mind still trying to make sense out of it. Lance could handle guns. He could handle torture. They both were used to working as a team and they were both in an alien jail.

As if Lance had read his thoughts, he suddenly laughed. “Oh man, we must have been a renowned duo then. I can’t believe that we were good enough to get abducted by aliens! We were the stars of Earth, huh.”

Keith shook his head fondly, letting Lance’s laughter warm his insides.

For the next few hallways, the two of them had developed a tactic. Keith drew the robots’ attention and Lance mowed them down. Sometimes it didn’t quite work out; sometimes one of the robots caught sight of Lance and forced him to run behind Keith, taking shelter behind the way too small shield. Keith would usually charge at the robots then, bringing himself closer so that they simply didn’t have enough space to aim anywhere besides his shield. Then Lance would dart out to the side, finishing them off.

But generally it all worked out fine until they came across two aliens, accompanied by at least ten cube robots and a strange, electrical humming in the air. It pressed against Keith’s mind and Keith instinctively recoiled from it.

“Lance,” he hissed. “Lance, do you feel that?”

“That thing that’s trying to be all sneaky and get into my brain? Yes,” Lance answered through clenched teeth. They both had their shields up, neither of them able to draw a gun under the heavy fire they were taking.

“Fuck, this is-” Keith let go of his own gun, throwing it over his shield and towards the robots, watching as they immediately zeroed in on it and blasted it to pieces. It exploded, killing three machines in the process and knocking over a fourth one over.

“Nice call,” Lance said. “I’ll hold onto mine though.”

“You do that,” Keith agreed, getting closer to Lance to properly guard his side. They had to think of something and they had to do it fast. This situation was growing steadily worse and the buzzing in his mind grew louder.

“Do not let the Galra and his Excazcán pass!” one of the aliens called out, their partner grunting in agreement.

“The fuck are they calling me?” Lance stared at him as if he could give him an answer to that. Keith just gave him a blank look and a shrug.

“Not a clue. I don’t even know what a Galra is.”

“Maybe those were our undercover names.”

Keith had just barely had the time to let out an amused huff at that when Lance suddenly gave an alarmed sound.

“My shield! Keith, my shield will go down any minute now!”

Lance’s shield.

Fuck. They couldn’t keep this up.

Roughly pushing himself in front of Lance and drawing up his own shield, Keith frantically looked for a way out. They were in the middle of an uncomfortably large hallway with no doors or corners to speak of. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

They were doomed.

And the buzzing in his head just steadily grew in volume.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

Lance’s shield broke. He could feel the exact moment the energy ran out, making the blue whatever it was shatter in front of him. It wasn’t any material he had seen on Earth. Maybe it was another force field - a different kind from the one that had kept them in their cell because unlike that one this one didn’t hurt to touch.

“It’s coming closer,” Keith suddenly said, screwing his eyes shut. Lance knew exactly what he was talking about, he could feel it in his own brain.

The buzzing.

It was coming closer, it was _pushing_ , it was trying to enter his mind.

“Just what is that?” Lance hissed as he readied his gun. “It’s loud, my thoughts are getting all fuzzy.”

“I don’t know. But I know that they have some kind of machine that they can use to monitor our brain activity. It’s not too much of a stretch to assume that they have some mind-manipulating stuff too.”

“They want to turn us into mindless zombies?!” Lance jumped up for a second and aimed at one of the cubots, destroying one of their two laser guns before ducking behind Keith again. Green lasers flew over their heads, piercing the air where Lance had been just moments before. They had to get out of here. Now.

“Keith, we have to get out of here!”

“I know!” Keith gritted out. “But how?!”

“Let’s fall back!” Lance said, turning around to look at the other end of the floor. There wasn’t anything to hide behind but there wasn’t anyone coming from that direction, they had to make use of that as long as they still could. It would mean to go back to where they had come from but this place was such a labyrinth that Lance didn’t doubt for a second that they would find a new hallway to follow within a few seconds.

If they survived that long, that was.

“Back?” Keith called.

“Back!” Lance confirmed, snaking an arm around Keith’s torso and steadily dragging him backwards. Then he halted again.

Something was wrong.

The buzzing sound hadn’t been this strong before.

“Keith,” Lance said urgently.

“I know. We- we have to hurry,” Keith said. He sounded slightly winded which wasn’t all that surprising considering that he was holding down the collective fire of the six cubots and two aliens in front of them. Lance tightened his jaw and pulled harder, allowing Keith to concentrate on holding the shield steady while he sorted out which way to go.

The hallway was so long. Too long. There was no way that they would reach the other end in time.

“Lance,” Keith’s urgent voice broke through his thoughts, “ _hurry_. My shield can’t hold much longer either.”

Lance cursed and dropped his gun, pulling off the upper part of his armor.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Keith exclaimed, readjusting his grip on the shield to pull Lance’s chestplate down again. Lance immediately jumped forward, pressing against the upper part of the shield to keep it upright. Keith noticed and let go of him again to take his control back.

“My shield is useless, right?” Lance gritted out as he pulled his chestplate up again, unfastening the clasps at the side and wriggling out of the arm parts. “Remember what happened to the gun when we threw it? If we are in any luck, then this thing will have enough battery or whatever the fuck it runs on left to take out some more cubots. And then we can take care of the aliens and make a run for it.”

“Cubots?” Keith asked. Lance smirked, finally having pulled his armor all the way off. His hair was sure to stick up at odd angles, but he couldn’t care too much about that right now. He had aliens to destroy and evil machines to keep out of his brain.

“Cube robots. I refuse to keep calling them Wall-Es. They have betrayed me, they don’t deserve that privilege.” Keith let out a snort and Lance breathed in deeply, picking his gun back up. “Ready?”

“On the count of three,” Keith answered evenly. Lance exhaled once and leaned against his friend, glad that he was here with him. He didn’t even want to imagine how awful it would have felt to go through this alone… even if he didn’t remember the guy, he was a great support.

“One,” Keith said.

The buzzing in their heads increased enough to make them let out a gasp.

“Two.” Lance readied himself, keeping the gun in his left hand and the armor in his right. Ideally he would start shooting the moment he threw the armor, taking out the aliens and providing them even more cover for while they were running.

“Three!”

An exceptionally hard blast hit Keith’s shield just as Lance threw his armor. The cubots immediately zeroed in on it, firing with full power. He quickly ducked behind Keith again, waiting for the explosion-

But nothing happened. The armor dented a few times, but there were no fancy energy bursts ripping the robots apart.

Lance’s eyes widened fractionally while Keith let out a few curse words. “Well, that failed!” he called then, physically leaning against his shield to keep it steady throughout the next hit.

“Fuck, we- can we get that armor back? It might not be all that comfortable but honestly, it doesn’t look half bad and we might just have to outrun those fuckers.”

But Lance knew how unreasonable his request was, especially when the aliens didn’t stop gaining on them. And then Keith was wheezing, doubling over, leaning against his shield with all his might - and the buzzing grew louder - and Keith’s eyes found Lance’s, frantic and distressed, and Lance knew what he was telling him - _the shield won’t hold any longer_ \- and then it all became too much.

Keith’s shield burst apart, the man immediately shoving Lance back and curling in on himself, hoping to hide the vulnerable parts of his suit with the white armor stuff. Lance cried out and almost lost his balance, catching himself just at the last second.

They were going to _die_.

No, he couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t let Keith die. Not here, not ever.

_“Keith!”_

Grabbing Keith’s collar, Lance started running for dear life. He waited for the horrifying scream that was sure to come when one of the lasers would inevitably hit Keith - but before the aliens even had enough time to target them, the buzzing inside their heads grew agonizingly loud. It was everywhere, all-consuming, it was crushing his mind. It was pushing him to do something and for one scary moment he almost gave in.

But then parts of the wall in front of them got torn apart and Lance was pulled back to reality. A way out. They could leave this death trap of a floor. Relief clashed over him and threatened to make his knees buckle. If they could just get into whatever room that was, they would have enough cover to take out the cubots and evil aliens.

Running as if his life depended on it - which it actually did, he supposed - Lance tugged Keith towards the hole in the wall. But before they could get close to it, a deafening roar sounded through the hallway, making Lance freeze in terror. He was lucky that the aliens were in a similar state, otherwise they would have surely gotten killed.

A loud clang. More of the wall got torn away. Suddenly Lance wasn’t all that sure if he wanted to go through that hole anymore.

“Um, Keith…”

“Just _run_!” Keith screamed, finally getting back to his feet and pushing Lance forward. He followed his order without hesitation, passing the destruction and going straight for the end of the hallway instead, running as fast as his legs could carry him. The buzzing was growing stronger still and he couldn’t- he just couldn’t take this anymore-

Lance hadn’t even been aware that he had slowed down again, some part of him wanting to go back, when Keith hit him over the head. “Snap out of it! Don’t give in! Keep running!”

“Wha- fuck. Gotcha,” Lance replied as he heavily shook his head to get the damn buzzing out. But it was persistent, tempting him to turn around, to check on whatever the fuck there was that had been able to tear one of the metal walls down. Tempting him to follow the roar back to its source, to let it in.

But no. He was stronger than that. If Keith could do it, then he could do it as well.

They finally reached the end of the hallway, turning right since they had previously come from the left. There were two more cubots waiting for them but Lance shot them down before they even had a chance to take proper aim, never stopping in his movements. Keith had taken to protectively place himself in front of him, just in case they would encounter other cubots that were better prepared than the last two.

And they did. They did discover more cubots. They also discovered more aliens and cells - they had to change directions so many times that Lance was completely lost now. If he hadn’t been lost before already, that was. For all he knew they could have been running circles for the last fifteen minutes.

And the buzzing. The buzzing never stopped.

“How do they keep finding us?!” Keith shouted desperately. Lance bit his lip, trying to force the buzzing away and focus on finding the perfect balance between shooting at the cubots and hiding behind the corner. There were too many bots, he realized; they couldn’t win this battle. Without another word he grabbed Keith’s arm, dragging him away from the intersection and down the floor.

“I don’t know. Cameras? Trackers? The evil mind-manipulating thing?”

Keith froze for a moment. “The cameras! It has to be the cameras. We have to get out of the building.”

“Funny coincidence, I could have sworn that that’s what we’ve been trying to do for the last few hours,” Lance said. Keith tried to respond, undoubtedly something about how it hadn’t even been that long yet, but got cut off before he could verbalize his jab. They turned around another corner, cursing and hiding quickly when two cubots opened fire at them. Lance took a second to breathe, then he stepped out into the fire, immediately destroying the first robot.

All of a sudden, Lance saw a blur in the corner of his eyes. It was Keith who was lurching forward, sprinting towards the remaining cubot and running past it, grabbing it from behind and lifting it up. It started firing like crazy, no aim whatsoever, and Lance almost lost his head.

“Hey! Watch it! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

“Sorry! But we gotta do something!” Keith called back. And, yeah, the plan wasn’t exactly bad, Lance could admit. A little reckless but not bad. If the cubot kept firing like that they wouldn’t have to worry about their next few encounters with evil robots or aliens.

They kept running and running, climbing and descending stairs until they were even more lost than before. Lance struggled to comprehend the sheer _size_ of this building. How long had they been running for? How much bigger could it be still? He was pretty sure that prisons shouldn’t be this big, that was incredibly unhandy. Once prisoners escaped they could be running around for hours before they would get caught again.

Maybe that was the goal, Lance suddenly thought. Even if the prisoners escaped, they couldn’t get anywhere. The aliens just had to wait until they tired themselves out.

“Keith,” Lance hissed, “Keith, we need a plan!”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Keith grunted back, heaving the robot in his arms. He was getting tired, Lance realized. His arms were shaking a little. This was the third robot that they had kidnapped and even if that technique had helped them a lot with minimizing confrontation, the robots were heavy and Keith could only carry them for so long.

“You holding up okay there, buddy?” Lance asked, concern evident in his voice.

“Could be better,” Keith admitted. He grimaced a little and gave Lance a solemn look. “This won’t work forever.”

“I know. We should try going all the way up again.” It had been one of their first plans: finding a way to the very top and searching for a window out. If they went all the way down, there would have been the risk of ending up in a basement and then they would have been trapped for sure. They had had to abandon that plan because the aliens had caught on to it - and because carrying a robot up the stairs had proven to be difficult.

It wasn’t as if they had any other possibilities though. Apart from dying or getting locked up again.

Keith seemed to breathe in deeply, then nodded. “Okay. Fine. Let’s give it another shot.” Lance almost told him to say something if he couldn’t keep holding the cubot anymore but then he figured that Keith would do that anyway. There was no place for pride when their lives were on the line.

Once they reached the next set of stairs, Lance and Keith began their way up. It didn’t come as a surprise when the aliens caught onto their plan quickly, after all they had already used it before. They were able to climb up two floors before they were met by a group of so many cubots that Lance couldn’t even begin to count them.

“Uh,” Keith said, staring blankly at the top of the stairs where the cubots hadn’t yet managed to get a visual on them. They exchanged a wide-eyed look before glancing down at their one measly robot.

Pursing his lips, Lance directed his gaze back to the top of the stairs. “Now that’s what I call dedication. You know, I’m actually flattered. We must have been some _really_ big shots if they are willing to sacrifice all their robots for us. Do you think we are famous back home?”

“I hope not.”

“Aw, come on, don’t be such a sourpuss. I, for my part, think that fame would suit me.”

“Just- just shut up for a moment,” Keith bit out. Lance raised an eyebrow at his hostile tone and propped his gun up on his shoulder. He had just tried to lighten the mood a little, it was no use dying in despair.

“Keith, my man, ever the charmer,” he replied sarcastically. But then he got a closer look at Keith: Keith, whose arms were trembling from exertion of holding that stupid cubot up. And who definitely had his eyes screwed shut now. “Um. Keith?”

“It’s back,” Keith wheezed.

“What is back?!” Not even a full second after he had asked that question, Lance could feel it too. The buzzing. The buzzing was back. And it got louder with a truly terrifying speed.

“I need to-” Keith began, pulling his shoulders up as if to cover his ears. Lance cursed and dropped his gun to pull the robot from his arms, throwing it down the stairs and letting it fire harmlessly against the walls. Before it could steady itself again, Lance picked his gun back up and blasted it to pieces.

Unfortunately, the explosion of the single robot seemed to have set the other cubots into motion, making them roll to the edge of the stairs and almost topple down the first step. One even lost its balance, falling down and firing into every direction. Once again Lance destroyed it before it could do them any harm.

And then the buzzing was there. It was so loud that he couldn’t help but drop the gun, pressing against his ears in an attempt to get it out. He shot Keith a panicked look and saw it getting reciprocated - it was _shoving_. It was shoving against his mind hard enough that Lance could almost feel himself bend. It was overwhelming and it was trying to get him to do something - trying to tell him something - trying to _enter his freaking brain_ -

All of a sudden, the roar from earlier was back. Both Lance and Keith whirled around, Lance scrambling to get to his gun and Keith placing himself in front of him. He was tempted to point out that there was no way that Keith’s thin armor could shield them from whatever monster was approaching them but he held his tongue. At least it protected him from stray lasers that the cubots fired.

After that it was as if time slowed down. Lance could feel the source of the buzzing drawing closer, whatever it was. It was coming up from behind the hoards of cubots and he readied himself, gun placed over Keith’s shoulder, both arms holding it to keep it steady. Keith was running hot, he realized; he was radiating enough heat that Lance could tell the outline of his body without actually touching him.

It was reassuring, sort of.

Then that moment of tranquility passed and the world descended into chaos. Above the cubots that deafening roar sounded again. The earlier force of the buzzing was back too, pushing against his mind harsher than ever - and then they could see the source of it: two gigantic, lion-like robots.

“Fuck,” Lance whispered, barely audible. He could feel the way Keith tensed from the way his shoulder shifted against the gun. “There is no way we’re gonna take those down.”

“No,” Keith admitted. They both gulped, frozen in fear as they watched the new robots wreck havoc. The lions didn’t even seem to care that they were destroying their own allies, simply brushing them aside and crushing them beneath their feet. None of the lasers gave them so much as a scratch.

It didn’t take the lions long to take out most of the tiny cubot army on top of the stairs.

“Run?” Lance squeaked.

“Run,” Keith agreed. They turned around as one, Lance’s hand somehow finding Keith’s elbow and holding onto it as if it was his lifeline. Keith didn’t seem to mind, he didn’t even shoot him a glance as they hastened down the stairs they had come from.

And then, all of a sudden, the buzzing _exploded_. There was just no other way to put it. It completely destroyed all mental shields Lance had created and overrode his mind, making him drop to the floor. Lance thought that he might have screamed something, Keith’s name, maybe, but he couldn’t be sure. They were tumbling down the stairs and it was hot, hot, _hot, too hot_ , and Lance lost his grip on Keith’s elbow and tried to get ahold of something else but it just fell with him, he kept tumbling down.

Then the movement stopped.

When they finally came to rest on the lower level, Lance slowly blinked his eyes open. His head hurt, probably from hitting it on one of the stairs, but the buzzing had receded again. It was still there, definitely still there, just a lot weaker than before. Lance had his own senses back.

...his own senses?

Fuck.

Lance sat up, immediately noticing that the thing he had grabbed earlier was Keith. Keith, who had both of his arms firmly wrapped around his middle, his eyes screwed shut and his face pressed dangerously close to Lance’s crotch.

Oh. _Oh_. Well, that was a pleasant surprise if he ever knew one. Smirking a little, Lance poked his shoulder. “Now darling, I know that you are eager, but I’m afraid we’ll have to reschedule our private workout session to later date,” he drawled, his smirk growing when Keith furrowed his brows and opened his eyes.

And promptly grew impossibly red and scrambled back. “You- I wasn’t-”

But Lance just shot him a wink and his most disarming grin. “Later.”

“ _I wasn’t_ -”

“We have to leave now,” Lance interrupted, fully back to serious mode. His eyes had caught onto the lion-robots again that were now leaping down the stairs at full speed. The cubots were as good as gone and so was the majority of the wall behind them, melted away at the sides.

Okay. Okay, sure. So now these freaking mind-controlling robots could also spew fire. As if them being huge and destructive wasn’t enough already. And the only thing they had going for them was one gun and one armor for two people! Talk about unfair.

“We’ll jump,” Keith said suddenly. Lance snapped his head around, noticing that Keith had already gotten up and looked grimly out of the hole in the building.

“Um, buddy, I don’t think that’s a good ide-”

“Now,” Keith insisted, grabbing Lance’s upper arm. He almost threw him out of the hole, the only thing keeping him from falling to his death being the firm grip onto his arm. Lance let out an ungodly scream, clinging to Keith’s legs when that idiot really decided to jump down.

Because, you see, as great as the escape from the mechanical death-lions was, one look down revealed that there was no ground beneath them.

Clutching his gun and screwing his eyes shut, Lance screamed.

“We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die, _we’re gonna die!”_

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

They were not, as opposed to what Lance’s shrieks were implying, going to die. Keith knew what he was doing. Or well, he knew enough to not die in the process. Most likely. Hopefully.

A quick look out of the hole in the wall had showed him that wherever they were, it really wasn’t Earth. The sky had a more greenish tint to it and the vine-like plants that were hanging down from the prison were bright orange. What’s more was that they were so high up in the sky that they shouldn’t have been able to breathe anymore - when he looked down he saw multiple levitating plateaus of what appeared to be villages or cities of some kind but no ground.

Unfortunately dropping to the plateau directly below them would have still resulted in certain death, that’s how far apart they were.

At least that’s what Keith had thought until he had seen that the different levels were scattered at different heights all over the place, not at a regular distance from one another. So if they were able to somehow change the direction of their fall to get to the plateau that wasn’t directly in their line of sight but closest to the prison… they might be able to survive the jump after all.

Keith hadn’t wasted any more thoughts on his idea. If they stayed here with the robots they would be dead either way. So instead he had opted to spring into action, grabbing Lance with one hand and one of the vines with the other. Hopefully they would be strong enough to support their weight.

And then he had jumped.

Unfortunately, it turned out that he was wrong. The plants were not, in fact, strong enough to hold them up. Keith felt a brief moment of pure terror flood his body when the vine tore and they raced towards the ground.

 _“Keith!”_ Lance screamed from somewhere around his knees.

Oh fuck. Lance. He couldn’t let Lance die.

Gripping Lance’s arm even tighter, Keith slammed his other hand against the metal wall of the prison, tearing through countless vines until one of the orange plants was finally thick enough to not rip immediately. He was thankful for the suit at least, otherwise his arm might have gotten seriously injured. They had almost reached the bottom of their level - which, unsurprisingly, really only consisted of the huge, dark, metal block that was the prison - when Keith breathed in deeply and used his elbow to push away from it.

Out. Away. He risked a glance up to make sure that the robots hadn’t reached the hole in the prison’s wall yet, then he swung his legs out. There was a faint noise that his mind registered as Lance screaming but Keith couldn’t focus too much on that. He had a life to save. Two lives. He had to get them to the closest floating level.

Once the vine caught against the edge of the prison, Keith and Lance got propelled somewhere under the cube-like building. They were out of the line of fire, at least. Even if the robots had reached the hole by now, they wouldn’t be able to see them anymore. Now, where was the next closest floating city?

A quick look around showed Keith that they were lucky for once. The closest floating level was right in front of them, seemingly only consisting of a tall building and a garden. Oh, and a wall all the way around it. Some fancy villa, maybe? The house of the alien’s leader?

Eh. It wasn’t as if he cared anyway. As long as they would survive this, he was fine with trespassing charges.

Wind brushed against Keith’s face and dried his eyes but he stubbornly refused to close them. He had zeroed in on a target and he had to get them there. As soon as he could feel the vine reaching its limits, he let go both of it and Lance to grab another one. They were bigger down here, thank god. He was pretty sure that Lance almost lost his grip on his legs in the progress, but the weight around his feet stayed, reassuring him that he was still there. For now anyway.

And then they were suddenly approaching the wall at full speed. Keith instinctively yanked his legs up, making Lance squeak and wrap his arms around his shoulder pads instead, somehow managing to narrowly avoid the stone.

Then the new vine tore. Part of it fell onto Keith’s face and obscured his vision.

He shouted.

Lance screamed.

Keith cursed.

Before he could get the plant out of his eyes, they suddenly hit something. Things that vaguely felt like branches dug into his back and caught onto his armor, making Lance lose his hold onto his shoulders. Keith desperately called his name and reached out for him but everything was fucking orange and-

Something gripped his wrist.

Intense relief washed through him as he felt Lance’s fingers dig into his skin. Unfortunately it didn’t last long; something gave way underneath him, making him shout again as he heard Lance shout back and more branches caught against his chestplate. But Lance’s grip stayed tight around his wrist, not letting go. Despite feeling as if his shoulder almost got torn out of its socket, he had never felt more grateful for anything. He managed to stop his fall and finally, all movement ceased.

Slowly, almost hesitantly Keith reached up to pull the vine from his face. More orange greeted his vision. It took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out that he was stuck in an orange tree, Lance somewhere to his upper right and mostly hidden by leaves.

“Lance?” he asked tentatively.

Nothing, just deep, even breathing.

“Lance?!”

“Keith, buddy,” Lance said then, shuffling around until his dishevelled head appeared through a bunch of leaves. He glared at Keith, the pressure of his grip momentarily increasing. “You are absolutely _insane_. Give a guy a warning before you pull a stunt like that next time. What happened to the count of three?!”

Keith couldn’t help the huge, relieved grin from taking over his face. “We made it.”

“ _Barely_ ,” Lance replied in a sourly tone. But Keith didn’t let that fool him; the twinkle in his eyes told him that he wasn’t the only one that felt strangely lightheaded.

“We made it,” Keith repeated.

“...yeah. We did,” Lance finally said, his glare transforming into a soft smile. Keith’s heart gave a lurch and for some reason he really, really wanted to get closer to him right now. Pick some of the stupid orange branches out of his hair. Wipe away the little blood that had trickled out of a shallow scratch on his temple. Just hold him close and feel his warmth against more than just his wrist.

“I told you. We are a good team,” Keith grinned, shifting his hand to take ahold of Lance’s. Lance didn’t miss a beat, he adjusted his clasp to entwine their fingers.

“That we are.”

It was an almost magical moment. Keith had known that Lance was good looking the moment he had laid eyes on him inside the cell, but right here, right now, where the lighting was shitty, strangely formed branches were pushing against them and the both of them were sweaty and out of breath, he looked _beautiful_. He was positively glowing, everything else fading into the background.

Keith’s breath caught. There was something he wanted to do, something he had to do right now - but he couldn’t quite see it. Maybe if he got a little closer-

But before he could move, something cracked and Lance let out a squawk. He fell out of the tree, the tight grip on Keith’s hand making him drag Keith down with him. A few seconds later they were both on some dark orange looking grass, coughing and brushing themselves off. The moment was broken.

“Okay, so, what now?” Keith asked once they had settled down. Lance shrugged, squinting up at the tree.

“The gun’s somewhere up there. We should get it down if we want to survive our stay on this freaky alien planet.”

Keith grunted his consent but made no move to get up just yet. He was pretty sure that there was a branch stuck in between his armor and the black suit underneath, scratching him every time he breathed in. He would have to get it out sooner rather than later. Sighing to himself, he began to tug his armor off.

That is, until Lance suddenly gave an alarmed noise and pressed him back against the tree. Immediately on alert, Keith raised his head and started surveying his surroundings. There were some large shadows on the earth… large, moving shadows, that kind of looked like-

Keith snapped his head up to take a look at the shadow’s source. And, sure enough, those were the lion robots from just now.

“What the actual fuck,” he whispered, his eyes huge as he pressed himself closer against the tree, hiding beneath the leaves and ignoring the branch poking him in the armor. “They can fly?”

“Apparently so,” Lance answered grimly. The buzzing wasn’t there though, so Keith considered themselves safe for now. They stayed silently pressed together until the robots disappeared from their view.

“We need to leave this garden,” Keith stated, already getting back to taking his armor off. “The sooner the better. They’ll figure that if we are not dead, we have to be here.”

“Right. Just let me get my gun and then let’s find something to disguise ourselves with.”

A few minutes later Lance and Keith had decided to get rid of all the white parts of their suits, they were simply too dangerous. Not only was the white color way too bright and noticeable, chances were that the aliens had rigged them with trackers or something. They couldn’t take any risks on that - their lives were on the line.

When Keith had finally gotten off his chestplate and started on his legs, Lance had already climbed the tree in search for his gun. It didn’t take him long to let out a triumphant ‘whoop’ and appear face down from between the branches, swinging the gun in front of Keith’s face. Unimpressed, Keith snatched it from between his fingers and kicked their armor a little closer to the tree.

“Hey! That’s mine, get your own one!”

Rolling his eyes, Keith leaned forward, looking up at the sky. There weren’t any shadows on the ground but honestly, they were on an alien planet, from what he had seen so far it would have been entirely possible that there was some kind of technology that made shadows disappear. Once again, they couldn’t afford to take any risks on that.

But the air seemed clear and when Lance ungracefully landed next to him, Keith wordlessly handed him his gun back, pointing at the villa-like building. “We should probably steer clear of that, there might be increased security around it.”

Lance shrugged. “Makes sense. If we’re gonna get caught again we’re gonna be in so much trouble… we just broke out of jail, killed like half of the security robots there and now trespassed into private property of some VIP person.”

“The ‘P’ in ‘VIP’ already stands for-” Before Keith had a chance to finish that phrase, Lance interrupted him.

“Do you think the guy living here has some kind of aggressive space-dog? Like, we just got kidnapped and shot at by aliens, I’m pretty sure that they are ruled by a malicious evil overlord that wants to take over the universe.”

Weirdly enough, Lance’s words seemed to stir up some memories. But they were vague and more feelings than images, so Keith let them slip through his fingers again. He could worry about evil people trying to take over the universe at another point, for now they just had to get away from here.

“I doubt that,” Keith answered honestly before he made his way over to the wall. He knocked against it: it seemed solid and there was no end in sight. There had to be a way out though, right? He doubted that whoever lived here simply never left their level. How would they get food?

“Right you are. He probably has a bunch of security robots… what do you think they look like? Small flying pyramids? Or tall with huge arms that have like thousands of lasers coming out of them? I have very specific images in mind, you know.”

Oh, he knew. He had them, too. And he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Were there really robots like that here? If so, then they had to leave as soon as possible.

Frowning, Keith turned around to face Lance and crossed his arms. “We have to go.”

“Are we gonna make a run for it? Just the two of us, chased by the police?” Lance smirked. “How romantic.”

Keith shut down. He opened his mouth to say something but then realized that he couldn’t find any words. “We just - we need to go,” he finally croaked out, turning around to hide his blush. His eyes were wide in mortification and he almost stumbled over a root as he made his way along the wall.

Flirting. Lance had been flirting with him. Come to think of it, it wasn’t the first time either. Was it a joke? Keith couldn’t handle jokes right now, the situation already stressed him out enough as it was-

Before he could get too far, Lance suddenly yanked him back. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Leaving,” Keith answered, willing himself to ignore Lance’s hand on his shoulder and his close proximity to his back. He would kill him if things kept going like this.

“You can’t just go stomp your way along the wall! At least make an effort to hide beneath the trees or we’re gonna be swimming through space robot produced lava in less than two ticks!” Lance hissed. Keith was just about to exhale and agree when his brain caught onto something else.

“…ticks?”

Silence.

“…I meant seconds?” Lance offered. For a while they both just stood there, staring at each other and trying to figure out what a tick was - maybe some kind of fancy way to say ‘second’? Because the pointers made a ticking noise?

Keith decided not to dwell on it. At least not right now. Lance was right, he had to calm down and figure out how to get them away from here.

“Let’s just stick close to the trees and follow the wall from here, this rich dude seems to own an entire forest of jelly trees. Don’t you think that they kind of look as if they were made out of jelly? They could have come straight out of a knock-off Candy Crush game,” Lance said then. Keith rolled his eyes and began walking again, closer to the trees this time. He couldn’t figure out why he was attracted to that dumbass.

Five minutes later he remembered again.

“Keith!” Lance hissed, clapping a hand onto his shoulder. Turning quickly, Keith’s eyes followed the direction that Lance’s arm was pointing at.

For around two minutes the trees had been thinning out a little. Coming to the conclusion that less trees but still being close to the wall meant that they had to be approaching some kind of exit, they had both agreed to walk more cautiously.

They had been wrong, it appeared. There was no exit. But there was something that was almost as good - clothes. _Alien clothes_.

As if on cue, both snapped their eyes towards each other and grinned. They had already broken enough laws as it was already, what were a few more? Besides, they really needed these clothes if they wanted to find a way to escape unnoticed.

“How are we gonna do it?” Lance whispered conspiratorially.

Keith let his gaze roam over the garden-like thing they had discovered. There were a few grotesque statues deliberately spread over the grass and something that Keith guessed were flowers. Flowers with slimy leaves that he didn’t want to touch. Not that he was planning to; his main goal were the clothes.

His forehead scrunched up as he tried to figure out how to get them. The garden was in plain view of the mansion that had a lot of windows. Not only that - most of these windows didn’t have any glass either so if there were any security guards they could shoot at them without delay.

Keith could feel something to begin burning in the pit of his stomach. He would get these clothes. If he was quick enough then it wouldn’t matter whether there were aliens with guns, he could be back between the trees before they got enough time to get a proper grip on their weapons. They didn’t need a lot of clothes anyway, he could just grab the nearest two items from the clothesline and hide behind the statue of the camel.

“Wait here,” he whispered to Lance, ignoring his surprised ‘huh?’. He then hurried his way over to the closest statue, something that resembled some kind of snail. Ducking behind it, he waved Lance off when he made a concerned noise and started to protest. Keith knew what he was doing. He must have gone on stealth missions often, he knew exactly how to make his footsteps lighter and keep his breathing even.

Slowly and carefully Keith risked a glance over the statue. No aliens in sight. They must have thought that the wall kept them safe from potential thieves. Smirking to himself, Keith set his eyes onto the clothes. Time to prove them wrong then.

Not even thirty seconds later, Keith had stolen two of the white gowns and made his way back to Lance, all the while remaining unnoticed. None of the huge windows were guarded by anyone… it was starting to feel more like an abandoned haunted villa than a real house.

He wasn’t gonna tell Lance about that though. For some reason he felt as if Lance wouldn’t approve of haunted houses.

“Here. Let’s just pull this over,” Keith mumbled as he threw one of the things at his friend. Lance caught it, spluttering a little when part of it hit him in the face before holding it out. It unfolded in front of his body, turning out to be some kind of dress-like thing. They shared a look of confusion and Keith dropped his own gown, helping Lance figure out how to put it on.

“I’m sure that this is the hole for the head,” Lance claimed. Keith frowned a little and pointed at a hole directly next to it.

“What about this one then?”

“Arm.”

“And this one?”

“The _other_ arm, the aliens had four of them!”

Something clicked in Keith’s brain and he tugged the thing over Lance’s head. Lance was complaining the whole time, but he somehow managed to find the right holes for his arms, leaving the other two to gape open at his sides. He almost made it look like a fashion choice. Keith kept that ridiculous thought to himself and gave Lance a once-over. The clothes seemed to fit, the flowing white material reaching down to Lance’s ankles. Hopefully it was enough to make them look less suspicious.

After Lance had put his stuff on, Keith allowed him to help him with his clothes. They were similar to Lance’s, in color, cut and length and he was grateful that apart from the arms and knees the aliens seemed to have a build similar to those of humans. He didn’t really like how the fabric shifted around his legs, always making him feel as if he was about to trip over it, but a disguise was a disguise.

A few jokes later about looking as if they were straight out of an ancient Greek documentary, they set out to follow the wall once more.

Against all odds, there really wasn’t any kind of security in the forest. Both Lance and Keith tensed multiple times when the lion robot’s shadows reappeared over their heads, but they never got discovered. They just kept walking for what felt like ages - until they finally, finally reached a gate.

“Freedom!” Lance cheered happily and made a break for it. Keith let out a relieved sigh as well, following after him and keeping out an eye for security guards, but once again there was nothing.

“Let’s get out of here,” Keith agreed as he pushed against the huge wooden doors.

They swung open. No alarm, no guards, no verification code. Just nothing.

As in, absolutely nothing. The platform of the villa ended directly after the gate.

God fucking damnit. Couldn’t they have one easy time today? Just one?!

“Uh,” Lance said uncertainly. “They have to have something to get in and out… maybe a spaceship of some sorts, we need to go back to-”

“No,” Keith gritted out, “I’m not wasting anymore time here. We’re already cutting it close as it is. The police could arrive at any moment, we have to-”

His eyes landed on more of the orange, vine-like plants from earlier. Huh. Slowly but surely a plan began to form in his head.

“…Keith?” Lance called, following his gaze uncertainly. When his eyes landed on the vines he defensively raised his hands and took a few steps backwards. “Oh no. Nope. Not doing that. Not again. Keith, we-”

“I’ll count this time,” Keith reassured him. He grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to the edge, already looking for the thickest vine to hold on to.

“No, Keith,” Lance whined.

“One.”

“Keith, please _listen_ , this is a bad idea-”

“Two.”

“We got lucky last time but you can’t guarantee that it’ll work this time-”

“Three!”

Keith jumped.

Lance screamed.

They fell.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Lance fucking hated Keith. That much was for sure.

It took them two more jumps to other platforms for Keith to realize that maybe, just maybe, his method wasn’t the most efficient one. The further down they came, the less thick the vines got. On their third jump it ripped, sending them flying past a platform with a huge stone arc on it. Lance wasn’t sure which god in the universe was responsible for them landing in another orange tree that cushioned their fall just enough not to die, but he was eternally grateful for it.

“We are _never_ ,” he hissed, spitting out a leaf and massaging his shoulder at the same time, “ _ever_ doing that again. You hear that? _Never_. I’m getting real tired of these tree landings.”

Keith gave a groan from somewhere above him. “Maybe it’s time for a change of plans,” he admitted. Lance snorted and twisted around, trying to free himself from stray branches without ripping his new clothes. On each platform there had been increasingly more aliens which made their disguises become more important than ever.

“I could have told you that hours ago, buddy. But no, you had to insist on jumping into thin air!”

“What? Were you scared?” Keith asked, his head appearing between two branches. They were framing his face as if they wanted to showcase his smirk.

“I’m not- I wasn’t-” Lance cut himself off and frowned at Keith. “Okay, you know what? Yeah, I was scared. Dude, you could have  _killed_ us, of course I was! Was this almost-suicide jump really worth getting to hold me?”

He hadn’t actually been aware of what he had said until he saw the blood rushing to Keith’s face. Heh. Cute. “I was just trying to get us away from the prison!”

“And I was just saying that there are easier ways to do that - and easier ways to get me into your arms, at that. All you had to do was ask,” he grinned.

For a brief moment Keith’s blush deepened, then it got replaced by a scowl. It seemed that Keith had almost gotten used to his flirts, Lance would have to step up his game if he wanted to keep seeing his adorable expressions.

“I wasn’t trying to-”

But before they could get into an argument, Lance noticed another problem. “Yes, yes, whatever, dude - did you see the gun? It’s not with me anymore.”

Keith blinked, then swiftly disappeared behind the branches again. “Gimme a moment, I think it’s stuck somewhere on top.”

“Yeah, that’d explain my shoulder…”

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?” Keith’s voice sounded fainter this time, muffled by the leaves surrounding him. Lance tried to sit up and see past the dense foliage but got stuck halfway through lifting his torso. Cursing quietly, he searched for where the branches stuck to his back.

“The tree tried to rip it off when I wouldn’t let go of our precious baby,” Lance sighed. He finally managed to get ahold of the stupid branch and snapped it off. Above him, the movement of the leaves stilled.

“Are you hurt?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m Lance, the secret agent that was famous enough that even aliens couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. There is nothing I can’t handle.”

There was no comment, but the movement of the leaves resumed again. Lance took that opportunity to massage his shoulder - he hadn’t lied, he could definitely handle an injury of this caliber, but it still hurt. He might have pulled a muscle.

“Hey, I see the gun- almost there-” Suddenly, there was a crash. Before Lance could ask Keith about what happened, a huge branch complete with Keith and a gun rushed towards him. “Lance! Watch out-”

Keith sounded worried and Lance would bet that his eyes were wide with panic, but as much as his warning was appreciated, it was way too late to get out of the way. Instead he extended his arms, attempting to cushion Keith’s fall. The branch smacked him in the face but Keith was safe in his arms, so he was okay with that. Not so okay was that something gave way beneath him too, making him cry out in terror and cling to Keith a little tighter. Together they tumbled out of the tree, taking countless leaves with them.

Moments later, when they had finally hit the ground, Lance groaned and let his head fall back. “You know what? I’m getting tired of this too. No more jumping from platforms and no more falling out of trees. My ass is dead.”

Keith gave a noncommittal grunt and tried to sit up. Something pulled at Lance’s chest and he sighed when he realized that it was the branch that had somehow managed to tangle itself up in both of their clothes.

“What is- Lance, let me go-”

“That’s not me! Stop moving for a moment, I’ll get it off.” Keith stilled in his arms and Lance sat up halfway, shuffling them around so that he could lean against the tree. He took his time untangling them, enjoying the heat that Keith radiated against him. There were quite a few leaves caught in his hair as well-

“Could you hurry it up a little?”

“Hey, it’s not my fault that you’re unable to climb a tree!” Lance tugged at the fabric of his own clothing. Damn, the branch sure did a number on them. “Besides, shouldn’t you be happy now? You’re always the one that goes on about having cradled me in your arms, now you get to enjoy the cradling.”

“I never said that!” Keith exclaimed, whipping his head around to glower at him. There was a tearing sound as the branch followed his movement and ripped away from his clothes. Both Keith’s and his eyes wandered down to his stomach where the white fabric now awkwardly flapped against his black undersuit.

“Oh great, another useless hole in my dress,” Lance said sarcastically. Keith looked guilty for less than a second, then he reached behind his back to get rid of the branch entirely.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, “the clothes were stupid anyway. We’ll find something better.”

“You still destroyed my dress!” Lance complained but accepted Keith’s hand to help him to his feet. “I demand payback. You should buy me dinner once we’re back on Earth.”

Keith rolled his eyes and let go of him again. “Sure.”

Sure.

_Sure?!_

Lance stared at Keith as the other froze, seemingly realizing only belatedly what he had just agreed to. But hell if Lance was going to let him back out of this. Before Keith could say anything, he hurried to throw an arm around his shoulder, his heart beating pathetically fast in excitement. “For real?! I’m holding you to that, no take ba-”

Countless aliens were staring straight at them. Lance blinked, then slowly let his arm drop down Keith’s back. His fingers traced his arm for as long as he could reach it - Keith got the hint: he angled the arm behind his back, allowing Lance to grab the gun. Once his hand was securely curled around it, he grinned at the aliens and leaned a little more into Keith.

“Oh, hey, guys. Lookin’ good today,” he babbled, winking at an alien that had an uncomfortably high resemblance to an octopus. Something was wrong here. At least half of these aliens didn’t look like the guards from the prison; there were crocodile-like beings, one with three legs, one that didn’t have a head, one that seemed to be more stone than creature. Who were these people?

No one moved. Lance could feel Keith tensing beside him and began sweating a little, his other hand coming up to curl around Keith’s wrist. Just in case the idiot got the idea to attack these aliens before they had even done anything. “Y-yeah, good, real good. Your tentacles are very… shiny. And oh, you, I really like that hat. Suits your eye color. Colors. Um, all of them. Very attractive.”

The second alien he had complimented blinked at him, its twenty eyes closing and opening like a wave, then it began screaming. Keith startled heavily and Lance gripped his gun tighter-

Other aliens joined the screaming. Only it sounded a lot less like screaming this time and a lot more like cheering. When they started _clapping_ Lance gave up his defensive stance and looked at them in confusion.

“What,” Keith asked through gritted teeth, “is happening here?”

“Dunno. They seem really happy to see us though,” Lance answered, furrowing his brows a little. He looked up - but no, the other platforms were totally visible from here. The aliens would know that they weren't some kind of gods descended from above.

Well. Better a happy welcome than being stuck in jail, Lance supposed. Grinning at the aliens, Lance waved a little. The cheers started up again and wow, if that wasn’t an awesome feeling. He had no idea what he had done to deserve this but he could get used to it.

“What are you doing?” Keith hissed at him, still as tense as ever. Lance rolled his eyes and waved more exaggeratedly.

“Being friendly. Look, they love us! We have to indulge them a little, right? Can’t have them be pissed at us, they might throw us back in jail,” he claimed. Truth to be told, that was an excuse. He simply enjoyed being surrounded by happy people- aliens- alien people- whatever- and the fact that he was the one that made them this happy certainly wasn’t a turn off either.

“We don’t have time for that, we have to hide somewhere!”

“And how do you plan on doing that without any help, huh?”

For a moment Keith was quiet and Lance thought that he had understood what Lance was getting at, then he raised his voice again. “There are lots of different aliens.”

Lance gave him a flat look. “Genius observation.”

“No, I mean - the aliens in jail were all the ones with the four arms. Same goes for most of the other platforms. So if there are this many aliens here-”

“-then they must have come from somewhere else. They probably have spaceships or cool stuff like that,” Lance finished the thought. “Good thinking, mullet, didn’t know you had it in you.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Keith muttered. Lance let out an offended noise and shoved him with his shoulder, but kept the gun hidden. He probably shouldn’t show the aliens their weapon until he knew why they were cheering for them.

At a loss for a better approach, he turned towards the nearest alien and gave them a smile. “Hey, uh, this is probably gonna sound a little awkward - but why exactly are we all happy and stuff? That drop from the sky must have messed with our heads a little, my friend and I can’t really seem to remember.”

An alien with two heads - one with eyes and another one with a mouth - came up behind the one Lance was talking to and clapped their hands together. “We are celebrating your bond!”

“Our… bond?” Lance blinked uncomprehendingly.

“Yes! The locals refer to it as Alsii, the ultimate bond. It’s something to applaud and cherish, the temple gave you their blessing.”

“The temple-”

“Okay, look,” Keith cut in, leaning towards the alien. They didn’t seem put off in the slightest, they just kept smiling. Lance was unsure what head to focus on. “That’s all cool but we really need to get off this platform. Off this entire planet, actually. Are there some kind of ships near?”

“What is the hurry?” the alien inquired, their eyes still sparkling with happiness. “Your robes suggest that you only just-”

“We don’t have forever! Are there any ships here or not?!”

“ _Keith!_ ” Lance said sharply and subtly kicked against his leg. Keith’s eyes were ablaze when he turned towards him, clearly pissed that Lance had interrupted his questioning. For god’s sake. Lance leaned close against him, cupping a hand over his mouth to prevent the aliens from listening in on his words. “Offending them won’t do us any good. Just let me do the talking, okay?!”

“But we don’t have much time! In case you’ve forgotten, they have giant flying, mind-controlling robots coming after us,” Keith hissed back.

...okay, Keith might have a point there. Sighing, Lance turned back towards the alien. “Sorry for that. My friend was kind of right though, we have urgent business to attend quite a bit away from he-”

“Lance-”

“Shh, let me finish this,” Lance whispered, eyes still trained on the alien.

“We need to-”

“Anyway. As I was saying,” he said, picking up his volume a little to drown out Keith’s protests. “We have some stuff to figure out on- on our home planet. We really need to go back there as soon as possible. So, are there any ships or something similar near here?”

The alien nodded with both its heads, but it was one of the few locals with four arms that answered his question. “There are! If you just keep heading straight down this street until you reach the edge of the platform, then turn left and-”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Keith exclaimed, fisting a hand into the fabric of Lance’s clothes and dragged him away. Lance stumbled over his own feet and nearly face-planted to the ground but Keith didn’t care. Nope, he even increased the force he used to drag him along.

“What the _quiznack_ , Keith, I wasn’t finished yet, what do you think you are-”

“Hold it! This is the police speaking, hold the jailbreakers!”

Lance let out a squawk at the authoritative voice from behind him and gave up all resistance. “The police are here? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

“ _I tried to_ -”

“There they are! Thieves! They are affiliated with the Galra and stole our Alsii-robes, hold them!”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, quiznacking shit,” Lance wheezed and picked up his pace. Keith kept up easily, always one step ahead of him. He also didn’t seem to care much for the aliens that were coming their way, effortlessly knocking them aside and opening a path down the street. Lance turned around mid-run to fire a half-hearted shot at the police officer, more intended as a warning than anything else. It seemed to work, the officer now declared them as dangerous and ordered the aliens to step away from them.

Perfect.

Keith ran even faster, taking the first corner to the right he could find. There were even more aliens over here and while that slowed their run, it served well to hide them.

Until they caught sight of their clothes, that is.

“Look! A bonded couple!” someone called out and suddenly the entire street started applauding them. Keith made a frustrated noise and Lance felt as if he was only moments away from exploding. These aliens were showing their pursuers the way! He didn’t want to go back to jail! Who knew what they would do to Keith this time, he had looked pretty bad after he had returned from that room.

No. Keith definitely wouldn’t go back there, not if Lance could help it.

While Keith kept pushing aliens out of the way, Lance reached for the aliens closest to him and ripped their coat off. “Sorry buddy, I’d make it up to you but we’re really in a hurry!” he called out while slinging it around his shoulders and reaching out for another alien with a similar coat.

“Lance?!”

“Over here!” The alien didn’t let go of their coat and Lance grunted with the effort it took to not give in to the pull. It wasn’t fair, he could only use one hand! He was just about to leave it and look for another coat when Keith brushed up beside him, taking ahold of the material and yanking it off the alien. They fell to the ground but neither of them had enough time to stay and check on them as the police chose this exact moment to turn around the corner.

“Thieves! Traitors! Step away from the escaped prisoners, they are dangerous!”

And they were on the run again. Lance pulled his newly acquired coat closed over his dress and pulled his hood up. He couldn’t believe he was actually thinking this, but better to look suspicious than be applauded. If only they could find another corner-

Luck was on their side for once and Lance caught sight of another intersection. Before he could even point it out to Keith, Keith was already running towards it at full speed. A grin formed on his face despite the situation, they really were in tune with each other.

They didn’t slow down. Not after they had rounded this corner, not after they had rounded the next one. They seemed to be in the middle of some kind of marketplace and they were still running, trying to find those ships the aliens had been speaking of. There were quite a few aliens on animals - Lance caught a glance of one of them riding on some kind of bear - but no ships.

“We have to get to the port,” Keith said, sounding distinctly stressed. It made Lance instantly wish he could do something to take the edge of the situation.

“We could ask another alien, the police haven’t quite caught up yet,” he said instead. Keith nodded and waved at the closest alien, riding something that looked like… a camel. If camels were purple and had really huge hooves.

“Hey, you! Where are the ships?!”

The alien looked at them uncomprehendingly. Keith groaned in frustration and Lance sighed deeply. Of course they would get the one alien that didn’t understand them.

“Where are the ships?” Keith repeated his question. “Ships? Flying? Getting off the platforms? You know, _flying?!”_

The alien lit up and pointed to the left. Keith and Lance simultaneously let out a breath of relief, their hands somehow finding each other as they started running again. They crossed the market, only running into stalls two times before they finally entered the street the alien had pointed at. There were fewer aliens there, allowing them to run even faster.

“How far still?” Lance asked between wheezing breaths.

“Absolutely no idea,” Keith answered, sounding equally exhausted. At least the police weren’t directly behind them anymore.

“Can’t be that far, right? I mean, we ran around for a long time already and the first alien also told us to go straight ahead and then turn left so we _have_ to be kind of close.”

Just when Lance had finished that sentence, the buildings to their sides disappeared. They stumbled out of the alley and onto a broad street that was almost as busy as the marketplace. That wasn’t important though - there was a railing. A railing! They had found the edge of the platform!

“Finally!” Lance honestly felt ready to cry with joy. Fucking finally. They were so close, he could taste the freedom already.

A confused voice dragged him out of his euphoria. “What is this place?”

“Huh?” Shaking his head to get rid of the happy thoughts, Lance took a look around.

And felt his stomach drop.

“This isn’t the port,” he stated.

“This is the stable,” Keith added. Together they stared at the aliens that came and went, apparently renting animals to ride on them through the streets. Lance spotted another purple camel, two bears and something that vaguely resembled an overgrown mosquito without wings.

There was a beat of silence before Lance spoke up again. “No, no, no, I refuse to give up now. Let’s talk to the stable guys and ask them for directions to the port,” he said and stomped off to talk to the local alien that held the reins of the camel. “Excuse me! Is there a port or something here? With ships that can get us off the platforms?”

The alien squinted suspiciously at him and Lance only just realized that he had kept his hood on. “Who is asking?”

“A friendly human!” he said, quickly pulling the fabric off his head and flashing the alien a smile. “You see, my buddy and I really need to get home as soon as possible but we kind of got lost on the market.”

Almost immediately the alien relaxed. “Oh, if that’s the case. Follow this street further down to the right, that’s where the small ships are stored.”

Lance had never in his whole life felt this much gratitude for another living being. He was sure of that. “You are my savior! Thank you so much, I will forever be in your debt-”

“ _Thieves! Jailbreakers! Get away from them!_ ”

Lance exchanged a panicked look with Keith, catching sight of the police that came down the street on their right. They must have spoken to the first alien that had given them directions to the port. Quiznack.

“On second thought,” Lance squeaked as he turned back towards the alien, “the camel will do. Thanks and bye!”

He pushed the alien away from the reins and jumped onto the animal’s back, kicking it in the sides to get it moving. Keith immediately came running up beside him, gripping his hand and hoisting himself up between the humps. “Hurry!”

“On it!” Lance kicked the camel again, making it go even faster. He had no idea about how the reins were supposed to work but they would find a way. They just had to get away first-

The camel was running straight towards the railing.

Lance’s heart dropped to his stomach.

“Left! Make it go left!” Keith screamed from behind him. Lance frantically tugged at the reins, almost dropping the gun in the attempt to get the camel to listen to him, but it just wouldn’t obey. It kept racing towards the edge of the platform, all but trampling over the aliens in its way.

Not that Lance could focus too much on that. They were nearing the railing at a rapid pace and the freaking animal just _didn’t react to him_.

“Lance!”

“Oh nononono-”

“Left!”

“I _can’t!_ It’s not listening!”

_“LANCE! Do something!”_

But it was too late. Lance watched in horror as the camel leaped over the railing, the ground beneath them disappearing. For an almost unnaturally long moment they seemed to hover in the air, then they dropped.

Lance closed his eyes and screamed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when will a chapter not end with lance screaming?? the world might never know... :P


	6. Chapter 6

The moment it had become obvious that their camel was going to jump over the railing, Keith had twisted around, searching for any vines that they could use to at least save themselves. There was nothing though, the platform was kept meticulously clean. He should have expected as much; this was the platform with the most aliens they had seen so far, there would have barely been enough space to plant anything, let alone care properly for it.

This was it, then. They were going to die. The few aliens that angrily shouted after them didn’t seem to be all that upset about it.

Turning away from them, Keith set his gaze on Lance in front of him. A twinge of regret pulled at his stomach; Lance had mentioned a family. He deserved to get back to them. He deserved to be happy and free, deserved a life away from all this madness they had encountered today. More than anything he deserved to _live_.

Keith had never hated his own helplessness as much as then.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he registered Lance screaming. Part of him wanted to comfort him but the majority was aware that these feelings were useless. His hands were buried in the fur of the camel and his eyes were wide open, stinging a little from the wind drying them out. They were falling into their death and he had accepted it.

Why was he so calm about it? And why weren’t they dropping as fast as he felt they should?

Frowning a little, Keith leaned to the side and looked down. There were miles and miles of uninterrupted air below them, so many that he couldn’t begin to see the ground. More platforms fanned out in all directions, gradually coming closer - _gradually_.

Tightening the grip of his left hand on the camel’s fur, Keith leaned even more to the side. The hooves of the camel became visible, surrounded by a soft, green glow. It kind of reminded him of the buzzing force field in their cell and it was pretty obvious that whatever it was, it slowed their fall. Would it be enough to get them safely to the next platform? They would have to get the camel to move to the right though-

“ _Aaaaaaaaaaa-_ ”

Keith’s jaw tightened at the ear-piercing scream as he tried to ignore it. If he could figure out how to tilt the camel-

“ _Aaaaaaaaaaa-_ ”

-without breaking the balance of the force fields, they might actually survive this. Didn’t the camel have reigns? Maybe he could-

“ _Aaaaaaaaaaa-_ ”

Enough! His left eyebrow twitched in annoyance and Keith tapped against Lance’s back. Couldn’t he ever shut up?! Even Lance had to have noticed by now that their descent was too slow to be natural.

“Lance.”

But Lance ignored him, he just kept screaming for dear life.  

“Lance,” Keith repeated, shoving him a little to get his attention. It worked, kind of, he lurched forward and slung his arms around the camel’s neck, all the while babbling something about not wanting to die. About still having a job to fulfill. Sighing heavily, Keith nudged him again. “ _Lance_. Stop screaming and look around, we’re not dying.”

“Oh, we’re not? What else would you call being trapped on a purple camel that just flung itself off the edge of a floati-” Lance cut himself off when he finally got a good look at his surroundings. “Wait. Wait just a moment. Don’t you think we’re kinda slow?”

“Yep.”

“Does that… does that mean we’re flying?!”

Well, to be perfectly honest Keith hadn’t really thought of it as flying just yet. It sounded absolutely batshit insane but thinking about what the rest of their day had been like so far, Keith had to admit it wasn’t even the strangest part about it. “Apparently,” he said instead.

“We’re sitting on a _flying camel_?!”

Keith shrugged. It wasn’t as if he could do much else. He just hoped that the other animals at the stable weren’t equipped with the same highly developed force field horseshoes, or the police would be giving them chase within the next few seconds.

That thought brought the familiar itch back. There was something… something that told him that this tech-stuff was important. If not for himself, then for someone he was close to. But Keith couldn’t for the life of him figure out who could be interested in floating animal alien-technology, so he pushed the thought away. Now was not the time to get himself a headache. They still weren’t in the clear, especially if the flying metal robots were still somewhere out here.

Lance, apparently, wasn’t that worried about it.

“Oh man, this is sick awesome. We’re on an alien planet, flying a purple space camel. Dude, can you imagine how the others back home will react once we tell them about this? I can’t wait to tell them how we broke out of jail, they’re gonna be so impressed with us.”

“I thought you didn’t want your mom to know about this,” Keith teased.

For a moment, Lance fell quiet. Just when Keith was starting to worry that he had said something wrong, he piped up again. “I wasn’t- I wasn’t actually talking about my family,” he said slowly. “I don’t really know why I said that.”

Almost immediately the weird feeling was back. Keith knew that there was no one back on Earth waiting for him, he _knew_ it. His vague memories spoke of foster homes and loneliness and when he thought about a place to stay the only thing that came to mind was a small shack in the desert. And yet he felt as if he knew what Lance was talking about - he just felt that there were people that would appreciate their story.

He just didn’t know who it could be.

Annoyance bubbled up in him and he frowned hard. This was absolutely infuriating, if they got back to Earth he would immediately go looking for someone to help him regain his memories. He couldn’t go on like this.

If they got back. Right, now was not the time to worry about this.

“We have to get the camel to slow down and get us to the next platform,” Keith said. He grabbed Lance’s coat and scooted as close as the hump in front of him allowed. “To the right.”

“On it,” Lance replied cheerily and tugged at the camel’s reins. It decided to listen to him this time, turning to the right and heading towards the nearest platform. Lance whooped with joy. “Suck it, officers! Special agents Galra and Excazcán are back in the game.”

Keith wanted to be annoyed at his antics but the relief of having escaped death by a hairline was making him much more agreeable than usual. Instead of snapping at him to stop posing with the gun, he laughed and patted his shoulder. “I’d tell you good job, but the camel did most of the work.”

“And I’d be offended if you weren’t right for once,” Lance laughed, giving him a bright grin over his shoulder. Keith ignored the lurch in his stomach and smiled back, not being able to quell the happiness inside of him. Just what were they? He would have to be more than blind to deny the obvious attraction between them but - he didn’t even know the guy! Was it possible to be so inexplicably drawn towards someone you barely even knew? Was it possible to work together as well as they did without having done so before?

No.

No, it really wasn’t.

_What were they?_

It was Lance who broke their moment, falling forward to wrap his arms around the camel’s neck. Keith shook himself out of his thoughts, that didn’t matter now. They could figure out what they were once they were out of danger.

“Good job, Roberto, you really saved us just now,” Lance cooed. Keith huffed a laugh.

“You named it?”

“Of course I did! We are a team now, you, me and Roberto.”

A team. Once again something warm built inside of him, making his face soften. “A good team,” he said quietly. It was enough to get Lance to turn his head and give him another grin.

“The best.”

And it was back. The weird spark that told Keith that there was something between them, a feeling, a shared thought that urged him to act. He- he felt inclined to _kiss_ Lance or do something equally as stupid. And if it wasn’t for the hump that pressed against his stomach when he leaned forward the tiniest bit of a fraction, he thought he might have.

Oh god. He had almost kissed a stranger. Not-stranger. Jailbreak partner. Team member?

This time, it was Keith who broke their moment. “Roberto though? Really?”

“What? That’s a perfectly valid name for a camel!” Lance complained. Keith thought that there was something akin to disappointment in his eyes, but he didn’t dwell too much on it.

“We’re in space and that’s the best you can come up with?”

“I’d like to see you do better!”

Now that was a challenge if he had ever heard one. A name was floating at the forefront of his mind and he didn’t give it much thought. “What about Kaltenecker?”

A weird expression flitted over Lance’s face but then he shook his head. “Nah man, that sounds more like the name of a cow. We need a name for a camel. What about… huh, yeah, what about Sebastián?”

“How is that any better than Roberto?”

“At least it’s not the name of a cow!”

But before they could continue their banter, Lance suddenly let out an ungodly shriek. Keith immediately sat up straight in alarm and followed his gaze past his shoulder, up to the platform they had just escaped from.

And of course the police wouldn’t just give up on them. Of fucking course. They were standing on some advanced looking scooters and coming towards them with high speed.

Keith snapped his head back towards Lance and pointed at the reins. “Make it go faster!”

“I’m trying, I just have to figure out how- you can’t pull at the reins and expect it to go faster, that’s not how it works-”

Despite his words, it wasn’t long before Keith could feel them accelerate. The wind was whipping against his face with ferocity and he ducked behind the hump as much as possible, seeing Lance mimic his position in front of him. They raced past the platform that they had originally tried to approach and past the next one and the next one and the next one.

“Keith? How’s it looking?” Lance called at some point. Keith twisted around and risked a look over his own shoulder, not surprised to note that the police were gaining on them. Not much, but steadily.

“Not so great,” he called back. “Can we go any faster?”

“Not if we actually want to fall, no!”

A plan began to take form in Keith’s mind. If they could shut off the force fields for a moment, just enough to get out of the police’s immediate reach, then-

“Oh no, I know what you’re thinking, we are _not_ turning the alien tech off! What if we can’t turn it back on again?! We can’t just keep jumping into our deaths like suicidal idiots, one day gravity is gonna do its job and we’re gonna end up dead!”

“What do you suggest then?!” Silence. When Keith was just about to repeat his question, Lance finally spoke up again.

“Let’s keep this up for now and look for a new crowded platform, maybe we can hide there!”

“What if the police catches us before that happens?!”

But Lance didn’t reply. Keith gritted his teeth and told himself to give Lance’s plan a chance until he had figured out of to turn the tech off. The camel hadn’t been floating on the platform, so there had to be some kind of mechanism to it.

Leaning as much to the side as he dared with the wind trying to force him back, Keith tried to get a good look at the horseshoes. It was difficult with his eyes stinging again, but he thought that there might have been some additional blasters to the force field. No buttons though - maybe the camel controlled it? How? Through its thoughts?!

“Keith! Get back up, what are you even _doing_?!” Lance screeched and reached out to press Keith back against his hump. Keith allowed him to do it, if only because his searching had been fruitless.

“We can’t keep going like this! They’re gonna catch us!”

“I know! I know, but you falling to your death isn’t gonna help us eithe-” Lance stopped talking, eyes still directed at Keith. Once again Keith followed his gaze to where the police were: they were suspended in midair, floating next to a platform as if there was an invisible border keeping them from going further down. Keith exchanged a dubious look with Lance, but both silently agreed to keep going until they were out of the police’s view.

And then keep going even further, just in case the police changed their mind.

When the aliens were so far away that they couldn’t even begin to make them out anymore, the camel suddenly slowed down by itself. Lance tried to get it moving again but it just got slower and slower, and with a start Keith realized that he had no idea how these tech things were powered. What if their battery gave out on them in midair? That would be certain death. They had to land before that happened.

It seemed that Lance had reached the same conclusion, his grip on the reins tightened and he maneuvered the camel sharply to the left, towards the closest platform they could see. “We gotta stop before we crash!”

Keith didn’t bother with a reply, he just anxiously leaned closer to Lance. Thanks to their increased proximity, Keith could hear him muttering under his breath. “Come on, come on come on.”

Slowly but surely the camel neared the platform, revealing lots of small, shabby buildings. It was a far cry from the elegant and modern three-story buildings they had seen on the other levels, so much so that it was slightly concerning. Was this the reason that the police hadn’t followed them here?

As if Lance had sensed his thoughts, he turned his head towards Keith and grimaced. “You sure we want to do this?”

“It’s not like we have much of a choice. It’s either land or die,” Keith pointed out. Lance sighed but then shrugged.

“Oh well. We’re already criminals here, I guess it’s time to live up to our name.”

“Shut up. Just because the buildings are kind of rundown-” Keith blinked. Now that the camel was nearly touching the ground, he could see that they weren’t actually as bad as he had thought. A little dirty, maybe, but all in all well-kept. The streets were mostly clean too, just worn from repeated use. They separated into boardwalks and streets, as if the inhabitants had some kind of cars that they needed lanes for.

It was then that Keith first laid eyes on the aliens living here. They were small and broad-shouldered, covered in gray fur. There were quite a lot that eyed their camel with curiosity, but none ever lingered.

“Keith,” Lance whispered, secretively leaning towards him. As if on autopilot, Keith tilted into him.

“What?”

“More bird people, Keith!”

Quirking an eyebrow, he looked back at the aliens. None of them looked particularly bird-like. 

“Where are they like birds?”

“No, I mean, their legs. They bend in the wrong direction, like ones from the guards in the prison.” Lance whispered frantically.

Keith blinked a little and looked more closely. Sure enough, their knees were turned towards the back. He wondered if that had any effect on their balance but he wasn't too keen on testing that.

“They are aliens, Lance. We saw an octopus guy, how is this surprising to you?”

“It’s not! It’s just- it’s weird, okay. Not everyone can be cool-as-a-cucumber-Keith.”

Keith frowned but decided not to think too much about it. “Whatever. We need to find ships to get us out of here, let’s go ask the aliens.” He hopped down and approached the first one, an alien that seemed kind of big in comparison to the others he had seen from the camel so far. When Keith came close enough to make it obvious that the alien was his goal, they stopped walking and tilted their head.

“Can I be of help?”

Huh. The alien and its surroundings might have looked kind of shabby, but it sure was polite. Keith cleared his throat and unconsciously reached for something at his hip - but there was nothing but the white gown and his skintight suit. Of course there wasn’t. What had he expected to be there?

“Yeah, you can. I’m looking for ships to take us off the planet. Where can we find them?”

The alien’s face shifted. Keith tried to figure out what it meant, but the fur made it difficult to discern facial expressions.

“You’re from the upper levels.”

“We’re from another planet,” Keith corrected. The alien didn’t seem to listen though.

“You should leave, you are not safe here.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do! I just need to know where the ships are-”

“Leave immediately. Your kind is not welcome here.”

“ _I keep telling you_ , I am looking for-”

“Woah there, Keith,” Lance said. Keith blinked and noticed how he would have gotten up in the alien’s personal space if Lance hadn’t placed his hand on his shoulder to hold him back. He felt a flicker of embarrassment at his own temper, but didn’t dwell on it. Finding out where the ships were was way more important.

“Say, why are we not welcome here?” Lance asked, keeping a firm grip on Keith. If it wasn’t for that, Keith would have asked why this smalltalk was of any importance, but he knew what Lance was trying to tell him. Stand down and let him handle this, there was something wrong.

“You are not welcome here. You have your animal, leave now.”

“Yeah, sure, we have Sebastián,” Lance said and patted the camel’s neck, “but we can’t go back up right now. We think that there might be a problem with the flying mechanism of the-”

“There are no ships on this level. Leave,” the alien repeated, a hint of panic creeping into its voice. It set Keith on edge, and he immediately looked for the gun that Lance kept disguised beneath his coat. Still there. At least they weren’t unarmed.

“Okay, tell you what - we will leave as soon as you tell us where the nearest bar is.”

Keith snapped his head around to give Lance an incredulous look. Lance wasn’t fazed at all, he kept a friendly face towards the alien until it stuttered out a few directions and left quickly. Meanwhile, Keith had to restrain himself from throwing Lance off the edge of the platform.

“A bar?!” is what he hissed as soon as the alien was gone. “Really, Lance? We have to get off this goddamn planet, how is a bar going to help us with that?!”

Lance grinned smugly as he shifted the gun from his left hand to his right to grab the camel’s reins. “Think about it, mullet - we somehow ended up in jail and we keep running into trouble. We know next to nothing about this planet, so unless the goddess of luck decides to do us a major favor in the next few hours, we are not gonna leave anytime soon. We need a plan; and for a plan we need answers.”

“So we are going to a bar,” Keith deadpanned. He was still angry but he tried his best to keep a cool head as he aligned his steps to Lance’s.

“Yup. Come on, you have to have watched some secret agent movies - which place always holds all the answers? The secret underground bar! So that’s where we are headed.” They took a turn to the right and approached a decently-sized building with a few alien symbols smeared onto its wall, graffiti-style.

“Secret and underground? Are you sure about that?” Keith asked, eyeing the size of the building. It seemed pretty open for anyone, actually. No suspicious people lingered around it. The only sign that it might not have been all that accommodating was the drawing of a gun and a knife right above the graffiti, the vibrant red color almost glowing in its intensity.

Lance scoffed at his disbelieving tone. “Dude. We _are_ already in the underground. Hello? Shabby buildings, no police, people talking about ‘upper levels’? That just screams shady business.” They came to a stop in front of the door and Lance handed the camel’s reins over to Keith. “And shady business means information.”

Honestly, Keith wasn’t quite sure if he agreed. Lance had probably watched one too many of his spy movies. “If you really think so,” he sighed though. If nothing else, they would at least be temporarily safe from the police. A breather didn’t sound too bad, now that he thought about it.

“Yep, I think so,” Lance grinned as he pushed the door open. Almost instantly thirty pairs of eyes fell onto them. “Maybe we can even find out why the aliens were so insistent on calling you ‘Galra’, wouldn’t you like to know why they hate you so mu-”

They didn’t even have enough time to properly enter the building when all aliens jumped to their feet, guns and knives out. “Galra,” one of them hissed.

Keith felt his stomach drop and took a step backward. He didn’t get far, there already was a gun waiting to poke against his spine. His head whipped around, coming face-to-face with at least thirty more aliens. Armed and ready to fight, all of them.

Next to him, Lance gulped loudly. Keith unconsciously pressed up against him, lining their shoulders up. How the fuck were they going to get out of this?!

“Y’know,” Lance whispered, “I’m really starting to wonder what a Galra is. Their reputation isn’t really up to scratch, huh?”

Keith just cursed under his breath.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to thank [kurosaki_ami](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kurosaki_ami/pseuds/kurosaki_ami) for coming up with the names for the camel, bless your soul ♥


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay^^' I promise that there is a happy end for them, just hold on.....

_So many_. There were so many of them. Lance hated to admit it, but even with his talent for handling guns they weren’t going to get far without a plan. And even with a plan it would be kind of difficult, he thought as one of the aliens stepped forward and pointed a sharp looking blade at his throat.

“You just had to open the door and mention the Galra, didn’t you?!” Keith whispered next to him. Lance tightened his grip on the concealed gun and breathed in deeply. After all, Keith wasn’t totally wrong - in retrospect, he could have chosen a better time to talk about the mysterious label that had already gotten Keith tortured before. But how had he been supposed to know that it was hated even in the underground?! If this even was the underground...

“Shut up and think of a way to get us out of here,” he hissed back. He could practically feel Keith’s flat look but before he could add anything else, the knife was pressed even closer to his skin. Stilling all movement, he stared at the alien with wide eyes.

“Are you affiliated with the Galra? What do you want?”

“Um,” Lance said intelligently, not daring to say anything else when he felt the knife digging into his skin.

“Let go of him,” Keith demanded. From the corner of his eyes Lance could see that Keith was furious. Nothing new there, he thought not without humor. Keith always took everything too seriously.

The alien didn’t seem to be as amused as Lance though. Their eyes strayed over to Keith but their knife stayed right where it was, uncomfortably close to nicking his skin. He took a subtle step back but was immediately met with another sharp blade digging into his back. Suppressing a whimper, Lance passed the gun from his left hand to his right, thankful for the long cloak that kept it hidden. He let his hand brush against Keith’s multiple times until Keith got the message and tapped back.

Alright. Cool. Keith knew that he could take the gun now if he needed to. As far as Lance could see, no one pointed a knife at him so he had more room for maneuvering around. They just needed a plan. As soon as possible. Preferably right now.

The alien shifted the knife and got even closer to Lance. Despite being at least two heads taller than them, Lance couldn’t deny that he was intimidated. He was also getting a headache, but what’s new? He had almost constantly suffered from headaches ever since he had woken up. His only relief had been their escape on Roberto and maybe the whole tree jumping before that. Then again, that might have just been the adrenaline.

“What do you want from us?” the alien hissed again. Lance forced an open smile on his face.

“Um, see, we actually just wanted some answers to our questions? We don’t even really know what those Galra are-”

The alien made a growling noise and Lance unconsciously jerked back. It made the other blade dig painfully into his back and he bit his lip to not make any noise.

“ _Lies_. You called your companion a Galra.”

“That wasn’t _me_ ,” Lance hurried to say, “that was the _police_! Honest, we have no idea what they are and we just want some information - like, we don’t even know why we were locked up-”

At that, another alien gave a high chirping noise. “You don't look like natives.”

Lance chuckled nervously and tried for a confident posture. “Yeah, uh, we're not. We want to get back home, as nice as all the attention was. That has proven to be kind of difficult though, the police has been on our tail ever since we broke out-”

“Are you saying that you were in Hewev?” another alien cut in. Lance wished he could turn around to face them, but the alien in front of him kept him pinned where he was.

“Um. I’m not sure what that is but if you’re referring to the huge, dark, cube-like prison of doom, then yes. We were in there and then we broke out because torture isn't something we're particularly fond of-”

Lance barely had time to finish that statement when the alien in front of him let out another growl. They got even closer - seriously, _personal space?!_ \- and Lance was forced to stare right into black eyes. No pupil. Or all pupil? Either way, it was creepy.

“More lies. No one escapes from Hewev. I’ve had enough of your stories.”

The moment they drew their blade back, Lance realized that they were going to stab him. Almost instinctively he ducked down, throwing his arms out to keep his balance. He didn’t quite succeed - he fell to the ground, one elbow behind his back to catch his fall, the other arm extended to hold the gun out towards Keith. The aliens were so close that he could barely see anything between all the legs and gray fur.

He could only hope that Keith would get the weapon on time.

_“Keith!”_

And then Keith was there. A burning presence at his side, always ready to spring into action. Anticipating his moves before he got the chance to say anything. Sharp and strong and more _real_ than anything on this freaky colorful planet.

For less than a second, Lance felt warm fingers brush against his own as Keith grabbed the gun, drawing it up in a fluent motion. He aimed it at the alien who had been threatening Lance earlier. There were at least twenty guns aimed right back at him, but he didn’t falter. He stood confident, legs protectively caging Lance’s torso, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

Everything came to a standstill, tension high in the air. A few strained seconds passed, then it became obvious that no one was going to do anything. Letting out a relieved breath, Lance allowed himself to fall back. Multiple aliens turned their heads towards him, but he honestly didn’t give a shit anymore. It was a miracle that he wasn’t dead yet anyway.

For another few precious moments nothing happened. Then an alien from behind Lance gave a deep note of surprise, pointing at the gun in Keith’s hands. “That is…”

All of a sudden, everyone began talking. A few aliens even lowered their guns to gesture animatedly, but the only thing that Lance got was that they were confused about their gun. Probably because it was from the prison, he realized. The police that had chased them on the market platform had used a different model.

Well. Nice. That gave their story more credibility. Maybe the aliens would let them go now.

...not that he really believed that things would turn out that easy. Still. One could hope, right?

“Silence!” An alien to the right of the one with the knife shouted. They looked so similar that Lance struggled to make out a difference between them. Twins, maybe?

The newcomer turned towards Keith who still hadn’t moved from his spot above Lance. He almost seemed unaffected by the screaming around him, his posture still tense and confident, eyes trained straight on his target. Daring to take a look around, Lance tried to get a better read on the situation. The aliens seemed distracted thanks to the gun, he could probably risk getting up without getting shot in the head.

His eyes fell on Keith’s ass.

...or he could stay on the ground for a little longer. The view was kinda nice, after all.

“Where did you get that gun from?”

“Jail,” Keith answered in a clipped tone. The aliens seemed to have a hard time believing him.

“Lies.”

“It has to be a replica.”

“But how would they know what it looked like if they haven’t been there?”

“We know what it looks like and we haven’t been there.”

“They are foreigners though.”

“It can’t be true.”

Bristling, Lance pushed himself up on his elbows. “Okay, guys, look, I know that you’re having a hard time taking our word for it, but that’s what happened. Some creepy, mind-destroying, fire-breathing metal monster melted the wall for us from the inside and we escaped. We have nothing to do with any Galra; we just want some answers.”

For a while, there was silence. Then the alien with the knife and the one to their right exchanged a look and slowly nodded. In unison, they turned around to look at someone that Lance couldn’t see from his position on the ground, then they turned back and fixed their creepy eyes on him.

“Answers, you say? We will tell you how to get answers.”

A chill crept up his spine. Lance had a bad feeling about this.

~*~

The aliens had taken them inside the building, crowding around them and pressing them up against a counter. There had been a lot of excited chatter from every direction and Lance had gotten even more concerned - but nothing could have prepared him for what happened at the end.

Swallowing dryly, he looked down at the gun and the knife in front of him. Keith was plastered against him, gun still raised with his index finger hovering over the trigger. Despite that Lance knew that the weapon was long forgotten, they were both trying to figure out where to go from here on out.

Breathing in deeply, Lance loosened his shoulders. He didn’t want to give the aliens the satisfaction of showing them how scared he was.

“Okay, so, just to clear things up. You want me and my buddy here to each choose one of these weapons and… compete against one of you.”

The three aliens in front of him grinned. At this point Lance had absolutely no idea which one had been the one to point a knife at his throat, they looked completely identical. Two heads shorter than him, muscular, gray fur, small fangs, eerily black eyes. Generally speaking, all aliens on this level looked kind of similar but these three were like _clones_ or something. Triplets? Carbon copies? Lance kept glancing left and right, lowkey expecting another clone to come forward at any moment.

“The only way to get information is to join us. In order to join us, you need to prove your strength and conviction.” The aliens behind them started cheering again and Lance pursed his lips.

“Is there a way to like… redo the whole thing? Maybe let us go and let us look for information elsewhere?”

Lance had barely finished his sentence when the middle alien already pointed a knife at his throat. _Again_. At least he knew now which one of the clones was his personal enemy.

Keith reacted instantly. Without a second of hesitation, he aimed his gun at the alien - not that they were bothered at all. Probably because there were like fifty of their alien buddies around to back them up.

“You are only alive because there is a chance of your story being true. And if it is, you have valuable information for us,” the alien hissed at Lance. Lance stood completely still, keeping his breaths shallow. The knife was too damn close to his throat. “The only way to get us to believe you is to become one of us. If you leave, you are our enemy.”

Well then. So much for that. Lance exchanged a look with Keith out of the corners of his eyes, they couldn’t afford to rile up both the police and an underground gang against them. Who knew how influential this gang was.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay,” Lance said. He gingerly pushed the knife away from his skin and gave a nervous smile. “I think I got that part. Fighting it is. What, um… what exactly are these competitions gonna look like?”

The alien grinned and twirled the knife around in their grasp. It was unceremoniously plucked out of their fingers by the one to their left, who slammed it into the counter right between the two weapons. Lance flinched heavily and scurried a little closer to Keith.

“Choose your weapons.”

Lance looked at the alien, then back down at the gun and the knife. He swallowed. If he could have chosen freely, he would have taken the gun - but that would leave Keith with a knife. His eyes trailed over the alien’s statue again. No matter who got into a knife fight with them, they would be at a disadvantage. Fangs, claws and muscles? Yeah, they would lose. And then what would happen to them?

Before he could ask the alien if they couldn’t just both get a gun, Keith reached out and inspected the knife.

Lance froze at the action. No. No, Keith couldn’t seriously consider-

“I’ll take this.”

“Keith!” he yelled, making at least half of the aliens train their weapons on him. “You can’t! You’re gonna die! I’ll take the knife, you take the-”

“We both know that you’re better with the gun than I am,” Keith answered cooly.

Shaking his head, Lance tugged at his arm. “You can’t go up against the aliens in a knife fight, do you have any idea how dangerous that is?! You could end up-”

“-seriously injured? So could you.”

No. Absolutely not. Lance refused to allow that.

But Keith’s eyes were burning with a fierce protectiveness that Lance he knew he stood no chance against. Keith was going to do this. Keith was actually going to do this, this fucking idiot thought he could take the underground aliens in a knife fight-

Something in Lance broke. His heart felt like it was going to tear itself to shreds, he was sick to his stomach.

Keith could _die_ if he chose the blade.

“You are not taking the knife,” he said, lunging for the handle. He was unsuccessful; Keith must have seen it coming, he had already moved his wrist out of Lance’s reach. “Keith! Keith stop, give me the fucking-”

“Not a chance.” Keith suddenly took a step back, using the new space between them to push the gun from the prison against Lance’s chest. “You’re the gunman. You take the-”

“I don’t want the gun!”

“Well, I don’t want it either! I’ve already got the knife, just take the-”

“I won’t! Give me the knife, Keith!” Lance glared hard, his fists clenched underneath his coat. He refused to accept the gun that Keith kept pushed up against his chest.

“You are acting like a child,” Keith accused. “I got the knife first. You take the gun.”

“Now who is acting like a child?! _‘I was here first so this is my seat-’_ ”

“Your companion has chosen,” the alien to the right said suddenly. Lance turned his head around to snap at them but immediately thought better of it when he saw their pissed off expression. “Take up your weapon.”

“But-”

“You’ve got three ticks.”

Lance almost laughed bitterly. The count of three was supposed to be their thing. Of course the aliens had to ruin it. They had to ruin it all, had been ruining it all ever since he woke up-

“One.”

“God, okay, fine! I got it!” Lance exclaimed as he pushed Keith’s gun aside and reached for the one on the counter. His hands were shaking, he realized. This was like jail all over again. Keith was getting himself into a dangerous situation and Lance was supposed to just stand by and watch.

Fuck. _Fuck_. He wasn’t made for this. There was no way he had been a secret agent - he couldn’t stand the thought of his friend getting injured. He wanted to go home, he wanted to take Keith far, far away from here.

He had to think of a way out.

“Take up your weapon,” the alien repeated. Clenching his jaw, Lance picked up the sleek gun in front of him. It was a lot lighter than the one from the prison, not that that would be a problem. He could probably get used to it within a few trial shots, no biggie. The problem was Keith and the knife.

Hunching his shoulders, Lance followed the three aliens around the counter and out of a backdoor. Keith was immediately by his side but didn’t attempt to close the newfound space between them. Lance didn’t know whether it was because he was angry or because he was unsure of what to do - either way, he was grateful for it. He still felt like throwing up and punching someone, his headache back full force.

“Lance?” Keith finally asked tentatively. For a moment he was tempted to ignore him, but he couldn’t do that. Not to Keith. Not to anyone, actually, but especially not to Keith. Extra especially if this might be the last time he would ever talk to him.

Nevermind. Bad thoughts. Lance swallowed and shook his head to get rid of them. Keith could do this. “Yeah?”

“It’ll be okay.”

Scoffing, Lance glared at the back of the aliens in front of him. The three clones led the way, but the entire gang was right behind them. Fighting them now wasn’t going to save them. They probably had a better chance to wait for the actual competition and hope that another way out would present itself.

“Oh, I’m _sure_ it will be just fine.”

“No, seriously,” Keith insisted. Lance sneered.

“Yeah, because you’re trained to fight against strange aliens with nothing but a knife on you. Have you seen their arms?! They could snap you in half like a twig if they wanted to!”

“They would have to catch me first.” The playful edge of Keith’s voice made Lance turn around to stare at him. He didn’t seem half as concerned about the whole thing as Lance was.

“What do you-”

“Remember how you said in jail that you were born to wield a gun?”

Lance blinked and tried to think back to the beginning of this insane adventure. There was a vague memory and he couldn’t deny that he was definitely adept at using guns. Weirdly adept for someone his age - not that he exactly knew how old he was.

“Uh, kind of?”

“It’s the same for me,” Keith said then. Lance blinked stupidly and raised an eyebrow.

“How so?”

“The knife. I think I was - am - pretty good with them.” As if to demonstrate, he lifted his left hand and fluidly twirled it around until he gripped it backwards. “It just feels right, you know? I also have… images, like, flashbacks of some kind of dagger. Maybe that means something.”

“Huh.” Lance was aware that he should have probably said something to Keith’s reveal, but he couldn’t really think of anything. In fact, the only thing that went through his head right now was _‘damn, I really wish I could see Keith’s hands without the suit’_. They handled the knife with such confidence and elegance that Lance was dying to know what they would feel like. Were they rough from training? Did he have callouses? How would they feel against his fingers, or wrist, or lips-

Fuck. Lance turned his head away and rubbed at his face. Oh fuck. He couldn’t deal with this attraction towards Keith, there was no way there hadn’t been anything going on between them before they had lost their memories. This was all a gigantic big mess and Lance was desperate to find a space ship, leave this planet and talk things out with his friend-maybe-boyfriend. Hopefully boyfriend.

“So yeah, I’ll be fine.” Keith’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. Lance turned his head to look at him and felt his heart skip a beat at the tilted grin and sparkling eyes.

_And I’ll go insane if I have to keep pretending that I don’t want to kiss you._

Lance groaned. This really wasn’t the time for this. “We need to talk about something later.”

Keith gave him a confused look and lowered his knife, but nodded all the same. “Alright…?”

Before Lance could elaborate - or the opposite, he wasn’t about to discuss potentially distracting topics before a fight - the aliens halted in front of them. They had reached a big, open area with multiple targets put up at an increasingly large distance in the back.

What was this? Some kind of sharpshooting contest? Relief flooded his body, it seemed he had lucked out for once. Lance shot Keith a confident grin and nodded at him. Keith smirked and nodded right back.

“We’ll start with the gunfight,” one of the leader aliens announced. Lance hid his excitement and shrugged. It worked out perfectly: he could buy time to figure out an escape plan and kick alien ass at the same time. “The rules are as follows: You hit bulls-eye, you advance a target. You don’t hit bulls-eye, you have to retake the shot.”

Sounded reasonable enough. He would probably need a few tries to get it right, but he could definitely win this competition.

“You miss a target entirely, your partner suffers for it. You physically move closer to the target, no matter if it’s hit or miss, it will be counted as a miss.”

His thoughts screeched to a halt. “Wait, wait, wait, rewind,” Lance interrupted. “What do you mean my partner suffers for it?!”

The alien gave an annoyed growl and took out their own gun. Lance assumed that they were the one he would have to go up against, but he couldn’t care less about that at the moment.

“For every missed shot, your partner gets cut one time. It’s to make sure that you treat this seriously.” The alien didn’t even give Lance enough time to recover before he continued. “The competition either ends when one of us reached the last target or when one of our partners dies. Now take off your coat and step up.”

Lance was frozen in place.

Cut _._

_Dies._

“Shouldn’t-” he cleared his throat and tried again when his voice cracked halfway through. “Shouldn’t I be the one getting stabbed when I miss a target? I mean, I made the mistake after all, right?!”

It didn’t seem like the alien gave any signal, but all of a sudden there was a commotion behind Lance. He whirled around just in time to see the rest of the gang forcing Keith to his knees, taking his weapon from him in the progress. Keith was shouting angry curse words but the aliens remained unfazed, holding him in place without a struggle.

Feeling vaguely ill, Lance turned towards the alien in front of him again. “Come on, man, that’s just really overkill, you can’t punish Keith for my mistakes-”

“We can,” they replied simply, “and we will.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you like reading about knife fights............... i certainly don't like writing them. so much narrative. it's HARD my dudes,,,,

Keith was, for the lack of a better word, angry. No, that just didn’t cut it. He was more than angry. Pissed. Absolutely furious. Who did these aliens think they were? How could they think that they were entitled to hold them against each other or force them into life-threatening competitions?

Hands were digging into his shoulders, keeping him trapped on the ground. He could feel the rough, stone-like surface rubbing at his knees, his suit barely thick enough to protect him from abrasions. At least he had been allowed to keep his cloak on, if he could manage to shift just a little he could probably use it as a makeshift cushion.

Not that his knees were high on his list of priorities right now. Or his very persistent headache. He had to leave before the aliens decided to get rid of his limbs - or, god forbid, _Lance._

“Take off your cloak and step up,” one of the three leader aliens repeated. Lance was watching Keith with a helpless expression and Keith did his best to look reassuring. It must have worked at least a little because next thing he knew Lance took off his cloak and all the aliens inhaled sharply.

“But that is-”

“Is he bound to-”

“But if the other one is-”

“How did they-”

“Did they lie after all?”

“We’re not lying!” Keith called out frustratedly. It got the aliens to shut up and press him more into the ground. His shoulders hurt, his back hurt, his knees hurt - everything hurt. There was a pressure behind his eyelids that spoke of a massive headache coming on.

“Don’t hurt him!” Lance snapped at the alien above Keith. The alien growled and tightened their grip on his shoulder, but thankfully didn’t shove him down any further. Instead, another alien came around to open Keith’s cloak for everyone to see.

There were multiple gasps as the white fabric of the gown got revealed. Whatever these clothes were that they had stolen, aliens all around seemed to have a strong opinion on them.

For a while, no one said anything. Then the leader alien with the gun took a step forward and nodded towards Keith. “That changes nothing. We will stick to our rules. You-” they swiveled their head around and focused their black eyes on Lance, “get in position. We’re starting on the left and will work our way towards the right.”

Keith shared one last look with his helpless friend, then Lance nodded at the alien and followed them a little way down to the left. Another alien came forth with something that looked like some kind of crayon, drawing a neat line on the ground. There was no explanation but the function was obvious: overstep the line and you will have ‘moved closer to the target’.

“Go first,” the alien said, gesturing towards the target. Keith watched Lance gulp and fidget with the gun, looking at him from the corner of his eyes before straightening and putting a hand on his hips.

“Don’t I get trial shots or something? I mean, come on, you can’t just expect me to-”

“The first five targets are close enough that you should be able to hit them anyway.”

“But my partner’s life depends on-”

“Do you wish to give up?”

Keith could feel the aliens around him closing in menacingly. He glared at the one that dared to put a dagger against his throat - hopefully they would be able to feel how much he hated them for this. Lance and he had just wanted information. They hadn’t even gotten around to asking a single question and were already forced into a potentially deadly competition.

“No! No way, I’m not backing out. Let’s get this show on the road,” Lance said. His voice rang with a forced cheer that hurt his heart. Even from this distance Keith could see the tension in his shoulders.

He couldn’t leave him like this. He had to help.

“Lance!” he called out. Lance, who had been in the process of raising his gun, lowered it again and looked over. There was worry in his eyes, so much worry. Lance was losing his composure over him. The foreign, warm feeling in his chest almost made him forget his words. “You- um. You’ve got this. Just chill.”

If he wasn’t mistaken, the smile on Lance’s face became a touch more genuine at that. But before Keith could smile back, Lance’s smile turned into a smirk. “Dude, I know. I already am the coolest here. If I were any more chill, I’d be an ice block.”

Keith wished that he could turn around and leave to show Lance how stupid that joke was. Unfortunately the aliens still kept him in place, so he settled on scowling at him. It didn’t deter Lance at all, he just laughed, winked and got into position.

He had _winked_ at him.

Keith could feel heat crawling up his face and did his best to suppress it. Instead, he focused on Lance’s posture, noting that he was much more relaxed now. Good. This way, he’d have an easier time keeping the gun steady.

A small smile crept onto Keith’s face. It wasn’t often that he was able to help someone like that. Lance or even Shiro were way better at it.

Wait.

...who was Shiro?

A thought wanted to surface - there was a blur of black and white, something warm against his shoulder. But before it could fully form, the image slipped through his fingers again, leaving him empty and frustrated. Why couldn’t he remember anything?!

There was a bang and Keith snapped back to reality. A small hole was inside the target, just a little off-center. Before he could call out encouragements, Lance wrinkled his nose and pursed his lips. “Alright, fine. Next time I’ll hit it.” He didn’t even look at Keith for reassurance; he knew what he was doing.

Keith’s heart swelled with pride and affection. Hell yeah, Lance knew what he was doing. He would win this for sure.

The alien took over and fired. There was no lining the gun up as there had been in Lance’s case, it was obvious that they had a lot of experience with their weapon. The small hole right in the middle of the target made it more than obvious. Raising their hand in triumph, the alien took a step towards the right. Keith glared at them but Lance didn’t even acknowledge them. He was already lining his own gun up once more, breathed deeply and pulled the trigger.

Dead center. Keith felt the smirk rising on his face and his heart give a throb at Lance’s self-satisfied grin. Sooner or later the alien would make a mistake too and Lance would overtake them again. There was no doubt about it.

The competition advanced. Lance didn’t hit the next target dead-on, throwing him another round behind. It didn’t matter though, Keith still had full faith in him. He could almost forget about the headache and the pressure on his arms and shoulders as he watched Lance follow the alien’s trail, each shot more and more precise despite the growing distance of the targets.

After ten targets, the alien started lining up their shots too. Their arms were steady as they aimed and pulled the trigger, advancing another target. Keith supposed that the growing distance made hitting the center more difficult for the alien, they took more and more time to prepare before firing their shot.

On the contrary, Lance seemed to take _less_ time each turn. He didn’t grin anymore when he hit the target, he just moved on and stared at his new goal until the alien fired. He didn’t even look at them - Keith suspected that he took the gun’s noise as an indication of when he could start lining up his shots. And each and every time he hit bulls-eye.

Lance was good.

Lance was _amazing_ , even.

A giddy feeling spread through Keith when he realized that he wasn’t the only one that had noticed it. The alien Lance competed against seemed baffled and concerned, turning their head towards him more often than not. It didn’t come as a surprise at all when they missed, leaving Keith to give them a smug grin as Lance came closer.

And closer.

And closer.

Three targets later and Lance had overtaken them.

Keith clenched his jaw to keep himself from cheering and breaking Lance’s concentration. He still seemed to be in some kind of trance, all of his movements were oddly calm and controlled. It was mesmerizing to watch him breathe and hit target after target, no matter how far away they were.

The alien, for their part, was stuck at their current position. There were fewer glances into Lance’s direction now that Lance had overtaken them, but they kept squinting at the target as if they couldn’t get a clear visual on it. Maybe they had troubles with their eyes. Keith couldn’t care less as long as that meant that Lance would win his competition.

And sure enough, that’s what happened. Lance finished his thirtieth target while the alien was still stuck on twenty-four, taking another step to the right before blinking in surprise when he realized that there were no more targets left. He lowered his gun and turned around, wide eyes first searching for Keith, then for the alien he competed against and finally for the other two leader aliens.

During the shocked silence of the aliens Keith twisted his lower arms out of the grasp behind him. With the same momentum he fell forward, freeing himself from the hands on his shoulders and darted towards Lance. “Lance!” he called, making Lance turn towards him again. “Nice job!”

He was grinning and so was Lance. As soon as Keith came within reach, Lance wrapped an arm around Keith’s shoulder and pulled him into a half-hug.

“I know, right?! Even I didn’t know I could do that! How far away do you think that last target was?!”

“Far enough,” Keith answered. Lance laughed and squeezed his shoulder. His heart mirrored the squeeze, the amount of affection it held became simply too much to bear. He adored this man with every fiber of his being.

“I know! That’s incredible! I totally wiped the floor with them-”

Apparently the aliens weren’t half as impressed as Keith was. The next thing he knew was that the two leader aliens without guns were stomping up to Lance and ripped his weapon away. Before either of them could open their mouths to complain, they aggressively pushed Lance into the mob that had held Keith down earlier.

“Lance-” Keith started to reach out towards him but he got pulled back. The knife from earlier was thrust into his hand as the aliens angled him towards them. Not that he listened, Keith accepted the knife but kept looking back to make sure that Lance was unharmed. For now they were only holding his arms, but the aliens had already proven that they weren’t above violence-

“Spread your arms.”

“Uh. What?” Keith swiveled his head around to stare at the aliens, but their faces were as void of emotion as usual.

“Spread your arms,” the alien repeated, this time a touch more impatient. Okay, a lot more impatient. It made Keith’s blood boil.

“I thought this was a knife fight. Lance hit all his targets, you don’t get to hurt me-” A startled cry cut Keith off and had his head turning towards Lance again. The aliens had forced him to the ground and twisted his arms behind his back, one of them pressing his head down. If his expression was any indication, their grip was tighter than the one they had used on Keith.

“Hey! Watch it!” he snapped, taking a step into Lance’s direction. He didn’t get far; a rough yank on his white dress pulled him back almost immediately. Glaring fiercely, he pointed at Lance. “Tell them to stop hurting him.”

“Or what?” The aliens obviously weren’t impressed. Seething, Keith tightened his grip on his knife.

“Or I will make you regret it.” It was an empty threat and everyone knew it. Thankfully the alien still made a weird gesture towards Lance that made the others let go of his head. Lance grimaced and wrinkled his nose.

“That was _so_ not cool. It felt like you were trying to tear my hair out! Talk about making my headache worse.”

Lance still had a headache? He had too! Keith kind of wanted to talk about it, just to make sure that the police hadn’t attached any weird things to their suits, but before he got the chance to do so the alien impatiently tugged on his arm again.

“Spread your arms.”

“I know! Just-”

“Aw, Keith, don’t be shy, show us your hot bod!” Keith’s unimpressed look didn’t seem to deter Lance in the slightest. “If you need help, I’m always available!”

“Oh my god, shut up! I’m wearing clothes!” he yelled back.“And I’m more than fine on my own!” He pretended not to hear Lance’s  _‘_ _I could help with that too’_ , looking down to hide the slight flush on his cheeks. Lance should really learn what kinds of jokes were appropriate in which situation.

While Keith was occupied with his thoughts, two other aliens scurried over, small blue bags in their hands. He barely even noticed them as they set to work, tying the bags to his dress. There was a small one under each of his arms, one in front of his throat, a big one covering his stomach and a tiny one at his left ankle. Only when they began to tie the one around his throat he jerked back into reality, glowering at them to make sure that they didn’t get any stupid ideas.

They didn’t. Or if they did, at least they didn’t act on it.

Once the aliens had deemed their work to be good enough, they stepped aside and disappeared back into the audience. Keith barely even spared them a glance. They weren’t important, he was much more focused on the one of the triplet aliens that had bags similar to his own tied to their body. Shifting his weight, Keith realized that there was some kind of liquid in them. After that, it didn’t take him long to figure out what they were supposed to do.

“The goal is to destroy each of your opponent’s bags and make them unable to fight, through disarmament or otherwise. All kinds of attacks are allowed.”

“Um, question!” Lance piped up. The alien gave him a scathing look but he looked right past him at Keith’s opponent. “What do you mean with ‘all kinds of attacks’? Are you, like… allowed to  _kill_ the other? There is a bag on their throat so if you aren’t careful you could-”

“It is not uncommon for there to be casualties during this competition. All kinds of attacks are allowed.”

Lance started to protest again - something about it being unfair that it was only ever Keith’s life that was in danger - but Keith wasn’t listening anymore. A rush of adrenaline overcame him, making his heart beat faster and senses more alert. In a few moments he would be fighting for his life. A fight without limits.

Really, he should have been a little more terrified at the prospect than he was. But the way the blood pulsed in his ears was familiar, the shape of a blade in his hand reassuring. He was almost excited to do this.

Briefly, he thought back to how Lance had acted when he had gotten into the zone. They were not new to this. They definitely were not new to this, but somehow Keith doubted that people their age would have been dispatched by the government to deal with aliens of all things.

Just what had their lives been like before?!

Later, he decided. He would worry about that later. For now he had a fight to win.

Finally, the alien finished explaining the rules and stepped closer to the wall of the buildings around them. Keith’s opponent used their knife to point at the large, open field in front of him, an obvious demand to start the fight. Giving Lance one last nod, Keith got into position in front of them and lowered his stance.

He felt  _weird_. Those bags of paint threw him off, he couldn’t properly tuck his arms in. And he’d have to be careful if he wanted to bow forwards, the bag covering his stomach might explode. He lowered his arms as far as he dared, then he raised his eyes to stare at the alien.

They were just standing there, waiting for him to make the first move.

A smirk pulled at his lips. Finally something he could do right.

Darting forward, he ducked underneath the alien’s left arm that came out to grab his throat. Their right arm shot towards him but Keith had already expected as much, swiftly blocking the movement with his knife. He could reach the alien’s paint bag like this, all attacks were allowed, if he could just grab it-

The alien’s upper body fell backward. And not even a little, they were almost touching the ground. Keith was startled enough that the alien managed to rip their knife up, nicking the bag at his throat. Letting out a shout he stumbled backward, arms raised and blade flat against his forearm to block incoming punches.

After he had regained his balance, Keith reassessed the situation. Lance was shouting something at him, but he didn’t listen. Couldn’t listen. The alien was running forward now, forcing Keith to drop to the ground and swipe at their legs. He managed to pop the tiny bag at their ankle, but they didn’t lose their balance.

Wait.

The  _legs_.

Of course the alien could bend that far backward, their birdlike legs gave them a different center of gravity. A center of gravity  _moved towards their back_. The moment of revelation came just in time, he rolled around to redirect a jab at his ribs that the alien had thrown over their shoulder. Keith needed to keep to their front, if he could manage to make them tip forwards enough…

Another swipe with the knife had Keith back on his feet and facing the alien’s chest again. Honestly, his opponent was at a disadvantage, the steady stance of their species left both their chest and their stomach bag wide open. So far Keith had also been decidedly faster - he could do this.

He would do this.

With renewed vigor, Keith sprinted towards the alien. This time he made sure to stick to their front, taking half a step backward when the alien reached out for him. Thrown off-balance, they stuck their knife-arm out to the side and Keith saw his opening. Smirking a little, he kicked his foot up against their elbow. The alien’s muscle and skin were a lot thicker than anticipated and he winced a bit, but he didn’t hesitate. Now that the enemy's knife was away from his body, he reached out with his own and drew it up the alien’s stomach all the way to their throat. One strike, three bags.

Then there was green. Green paint exploded everywhere and Keith cursed a little as he jumped backward. He didn’t want to get it in his eyes.

“Keith! Don’t touch the paint! You don’t know if it’s safe for humans!” Lance screeched from somewhere else.

Well, yeah. That too. It was good that the black suit protected most of him, apart from his face.

Unfortunately, Lance’s shout also gave the alien an idea. They started using their knife to flick paint into his direction, making Keith curse and hide behind his arms. Suddenly, he heard the alien barreling towards him - in a last-ditch effort to avoid the swipe, Keith stumbled to the side.

But their side and back weren’t safe zones. Damnit. He had to concentrate, what was he doing?!

Gritting his teeth, he avoided two punches and a kick in his direction. He had to get the last two bags before the alien could get his. Keith still had five bags left, he could afford to take a risk. And he definitely had to take one if he wanted to destroy the bags beneath the alien’s arms.

Running towards his opponent’s right side, Keith lifted his blade to strike. The alien mimicked one of Keith’s first moves and pressed the blade flat against his forearm - perfect.

Now he had to act fast.

Keith threw himself onto the arm, hearing the alien shout in confusion. He grunted as he pressed his torso as close as possible, making his chest and stomach bag explode, but effectively trapping the knife. It didn’t surprise him that the alien didn’t lose their balance over him hanging off one arm and he lashed out, destroying the bag underneath their right arm.

Success.

He barely had the time to grin when the alien’s other hand came to tear him off, destroying the bag underneath Keith’s right arm in the process. The paint seemed to make him slippery at least and he managed to escape from their grasp before they could do any more damage. Half of his dress was gone now too, but Keith didn’t care much about it.

There was just one bag left. He himself still had two, the tiny one at his ankle being his saving grace.

Breathing hard, Keith let his eyes dart around. The alien was watching him, arms carefully lifted a little just like he di-

No. Not like he did. The alien could probably crush these bags way easier than Keith ever could. The only thing he had to do is get them to tuck their arms in… and take their weapon away.

Keith decided to once more go for the direct approach. He took off towards the alien, ignoring Lance’s concerned shouts in the background. The alien had shifted their stance to the left, allowing them to protect their side better. Keith was undeterred; he kept going at full speed until he was directly in front of them and ducked underneath their arms once more.

As soon as the alien started to lean back, Keith drew his left leg up and kicked their knees. With a shout the alien tumbled towards the ground, one arm behind them to cushion their fall and one arm raised to defend against Keith’s knife.

Good.

Keith threw his knife, aiming at their face. He had been close enough that the alien had to lean back even more, inadvertently crushing their last bag beneath their body weight. Using the distraction of the explosion, Keith kicked their raised elbow towards the ground. He followed quickly, jumping high to gain momentum and landed directly on their wrist.

There was a shout of pain and the alien loosened their grip on their blade. Keith kicked it away before reaching for his own one, whirling around to hold it against the alien’s throat. He was perched over them, one hand balanced on their chest, hoping that this would be enough to win the competition.

For a few moments, there was nothing to be heard but heavy breathing and soft wind. Finally the alien let their head fall back, one hand raised in surrender. Keith let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and stumbled away from them towards Lance, a relieved smile on his face.

“Lance-”

“ _Dude_ , what the  _fuck_ ,” Lance greeted him. The mob released him, allowing him to get to his knees and plant his hands on either of Keith’s shoulders. “You are absolutely _insane_! I thought you gutted yourself back there!”

Slowly, his elation faded and his smile got replaced by a pout. Was Lance mad at him? “I won, didn’t I?”

“You did!” Lance exclaimed. “You were - fuck, you were insane, but man. Keith, buddy, you’ve got some  _badass_ knife skills. You were all like  _hyaa_ and _swish_ \- dude!”

No, Keith realized, he wasn’t mad. Not really. Lance’s eyes were bright with excitement and Keith could feel his own smile slowly creeping back over his face. “You totally owned that guy! I can’t even be angry at you for doing stupid maneuvers if you look so cool while doing them!”

Finally, Keith let out a laugh. He curled his hands around Lance’s wrists and let it settle in that they had won. Both of them. They were safe now. They could find a way back home.

“So you enjoyed the show?” he quipped. Now it was Lance’s turn to let out a laugh. Before Keith could get lost in the warm sound of it, he was drawn into a tight hug.

“That’s debatable. I was worried out of my mind. But enjoyed or not, nice work out there. You’re a real space ninja now.”

“A what?” Keith asked amusedly.

“Ninja… samurai. I bet you’d do even better with a sword. Hell yeah, those can be our new codenames. From now on we’re Samurai and Sharpshooter, what do you think? Much better than Galra and Excazcán.” Lance drew back to grin at him and Keith felt hopelessly in love with his expression. His hair was a mess but his eyes were shining and alive - Keith swore he had never seen a smile that genuine before.

Fuck. _Fuck fuck fuck._

He was saved from answering by an alien clearing their throat and effectively drawing their attention to themselves. Letting go of each other, both Lance and Keith turned towards them, eyebrows raised.

“I believe,” they said slowly, “we owe you a talk.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! Come find me on [tumblr](http://keiths-stupid-mullet.tumblr.com/), I'm always happy to chat^^


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